FIVE

Working class tins of tobacco and high visibility shirts. Gas station breakfast. Lifted trucks. Conservative values. Concrete ideals. Taxed literally to death under the guise that incremental acquisition of material goods leads to prosperity. Diabetes and obesity from the television to the driver’s seat. We are killing ourselves.

—-

I thought about turning onto Old Grade Road today and taking a trip toward the past. I gave it thought and thought better. You were a pretty integral part of my life until you weren’t and I suppose that’s the short story on all of us…here until we aren’t.

Ponder it. Mill it. Mine it. Forget it.

We rinse. We repeat. We write it down on a post-it note and we hang it so we can walk past it.

—-

I saw the snowmobile in the front yard and I thought that I should stop and take a picture of it because it somehow spoke to me in the ways that solitude and loneliness have a tendency to do. I didn’t stop. I didn’t take the photo. It was fleeting. Fleeing. Feeling.

—-

Jerry asked me if I’d ever done drugs. I told him I had, but only in the occasions where I’d already consumed enough alcohol to numb the side effects. He was unmoved and somehow simultaneously satisfied to have sized me up. We drank coffee and sat there for about an hour.

—-

It’s been my experience that I tend to hold onto things I’ve created, or things I’ve held dear because I adore them in the ways that they help mold and shape me.

I’ve done this with my work and my kids and my romantic relationships and my art and even the bike races I’ve pieced together.

In my 45 years on this earth, I’ve gotten very good at holding onto things, and, in the same 45 years, I’ve learned that the desire to hold tight to the things I’ve carried along with me doesn’t outweigh the joy and unparalleled wholeness that accompanies letting go of them.

When I look backwards, I made every attempt to firmly secure within the cycling community the purity that I believed poured out of keeping Almanzo free and mostly analog. It nearly killed me and it absolutely put me over an emotional barrel for too many years in its wake.

When I finally uncovered the magic of letting go, sometime between this very moment and the Spring of 2022, I realized that what I’d clung so desperately to, was the very thing that prevented me from seeing the real good that I had been doing over the course of my whole life.

When we create things and offer them to the world, they no longer belong to us. As soon as another’s eyes cross the work that we’ve done, the perspective of that work is subject to the viewers preference and prior knowledge.

People will always be fast. People will always have an opinion. Making the move to reinvent the past won’t prevent either and it certainly won’t sweep us all up and deliver us back in time.

As long as I wake up and choose to interact with folks, it’ll be the interaction that matters. What I say, what I do and how I make people feel will be my legacy. Looking backward won’t change that. Going forward from here will.

Hope this is helpful.

—-

I can imagine long, desolate stretches of cracked pavement roads complete with concrete bridges and shoulders that roll into ditches filled with dead grass and the occasional reflective stick.

—

The evaporating light from the city over the horizon forces the black silhouette of the tree line into the foreground. Conversely, the flooding light of the roadside billboard forces the silhouette of the tree line into the background. At times, both exist simultaneously.

—-

I followed you into the river and when I discovered that I couldn’t breathe I walked myself right out. I never actually got wet, but I always wondered why I wandered in.

—-

What I can’t tell is if you’re always full of shit and spitting out toxic nonsense or if it’s a newer byproduct of living in a world that looks nothing like the one you grew up in. I suppose it could be some version of a number of things. The further I get down the road on all of this the less likely I am to stick around for it.

—-

Hang your hat on all the achievements you ever racked up. Bring them up from time to time to remind yourself that you’re valid and not a total waste of skin and bones.

—

A projection of expectations.

—-

A conversation about a card game in the adjacent booth. Two entrees mixed into one.  A culinary departure from the landscape. Winter abounds. Northern climate with winds pointing south. Roads covered in ice. Mild. Medium. Spicy. A high school date across the isle. I am likely halfway through my life at this point and I find myself looking backwards and forwards with alarming frequency. I am inclined to share my thoughts and my words and then I get yanked away from the concept by my ego and my own ability to self-shame myself into a space where I cannot see any reason why anyone would give a shit about anything I have to say. All of this while knowing full well that the better part of my existence and experience is a byproduct of participating in conversations with people that learned things from books just as often as they learned things from their peers and their communities at large. Shame. Self-doubt. Indecision. Insecurity. Round and round and round.

Go outside in the cold. Buy something to distract. Try and make something pretty. Share. Don’t share.

—-

Brian Eno, Ambient 4: On Land

Adam Bokesch, Architecture of Dreams

—-

Soundscape escape in some vision of virtual reality as a means to unwind and capture creativity. Lossless ego anxiety. Brushless car wash in a poorly made hotel bed. Houseless housekeeping staff struggling to make ends meet manages to make hospital corners two at a time. I can remember the towels folded like elephants and the dozens of cigarettes smoked. Espresso and a sober streak that’ll last a couple of decades. Close the eyes and feel the pulse move from one ear to the other. It’ll blow your mind if you let it. Weightlessness in the stationary. Heated seats and a controlled climate leaves nothing left but the slower than the speed limit lurching. Ten fold and twenty. Twenty fold and thirty. Count them up and run down to the circle. In the right frame of mind words have no trouble spilling out.

—-

Desolate space as far as the eye can see. Covered in every direction by one and two-story buildings and light poles that reach just above. Trees that seem to universally stop at the thirty foot mark. Gas stations and pizza restaurants and hole-in-the-wall bars litter the avenues between the off-branded hotels that never seem full.

—-

Life is, in a lot of ways, a series of shared and exchanged cliches strung together over time. The beauty of this reality is that you’ll likely hear all of them before you actually hear them and when they finally make sense, you’ll wonder how you’d never heard it before.

—-

I remember eating yogurt on the back of the truck outside that grocery store in the middle of nowhere. I also remember, separately, eating breakfast at a diner in Fargo. The two are unrelated beyond their connection as breakfasts. If I spend any time with it, I imagine my life is full of experiences identical to this. I know for sure that I’ve sat on several couches in several different spaces for identical periods of time. This list, should it ever materialize, will be quite long.

—-

I read an article tonight about a basketball coach that is about to eclipse the current record for most wins as a college coach. The article was well written, as it was produced by a writer for the New York Times. They are a talented bunch. Anyway, the article quotes the coach as saying, “If you can’t swim, you can’t rescue the other swimmer, and you’ll both go down.” I suppose it could mean a lot of things, but for the purposes of capturing this thought, I’ll take it to mean that I must be good at what I do, be it living or parenting or writing or riding a bike, if I am to be of service to others in those spaces. If I don’t take care of myself, how can I take care of anyone else? If I don’t have experience in a particular field, how can I offer insight or assistance to another in a particular field?

Learn how to swim. Help others. Repeat. Expand.

—-

Creating the habit is as simple as making the decision to do the thing and then immediately following that decision with an action to do the thing. Will power has nothing to do with it. Honor to oneself has everything to do with it. If we cannot keep our word to ourselves, we can create or change habits. If we cannot keep our word to ourselves, we likely cannot keep it to anyone.

Do the things. Make the changes. Believe in it. Honor it.

—-

My trouble is that I have a tendency to wrap my identity into all of the things that I get complimented on and then I chase them…even if I no longer have an attraction to them. I chase the feelings.

—-

Project your expectations onto others for guaranteed success. To eliminate the possibility for failure, be certain to never communicate your expectations.

—-

There are a number of days when I wake up with a strong desire to disconnect from most of the people I know. No texts. No phone calls. No emails. No friendly waves. No contact. None.

—-

I took the job because I thought it would be better than the job I had where the guy threw empty aluminum cans at me which was supposed to better than the job I had consoling a person that was losing their business which was supposed to better than the job I had working in a basement for minimum wage not having a single person ask me a single question which was supposed to be better than the job I had leading 300 people toward a never ending goal which was supposed to be better than leading a group of 60 people similarly which was supposed to be better than selling fancy drinks to fancy people which was supposed to be better than selling records at the mall which was supposed to better than washing dishes in a nursing home which was supposed to be better than delivering newspapers which was supposed to be the thing than afforded me freedom and liberty through financial security.

Of course, the aforementioned fails to call out the countless avenues pursued and efforts put forth into the hundreds of conventional and hair-brained ideas I’ve had along the way that we’re all earmarked to be better than everything else I had ever previously dreamt up, explored and/or executed.

I am, simultaneously, my very own hero and my very own enemy.

—-

You are going to behave and get in line and do as you’re told.

You are going to go to school and do your homework and get good grades and join the cheerleading squad and be on the football team and be the class president and lead the yearbook committee.

You are going to go to college and go to class and join a fraternity and a sorority and you’ll rush them both and move off campus and build a network and graduate and graduate in five years and go back to school to get a masters degree and some more debt.

You are going to marry your high school sweetheart and get an entry-level job at a corporate firm in the city and get an apartment and some second-hand furniture  and go to brunch on the weekends with the girls and play golf or softball with the boys and take trips to the mountains and go home for the holidays and visit your grandparents and buy a car and build your credit and save enough money to put a down payment on that house in the suburbs and have a kid and have a second kid and get a bigger house and a safer car and a subscription to satellite radio and start some traditions and start a retirement fund and get life insurance and get a will and testament and find a lawyer and an insurance sales person and put puzzles together and watch the news and go to bed at eight.

You’re going to do all these things because that’s what you’ve been told and what you’re told is what you become and then one day you wake up and you look in the mirror and you think, “fuck. I didn’t see any of this coming and now here I am with grey hair and no friends and I wish I would’ve done the thing that I wanted to do instead of doing the things I felt like I was supposed to do.”

This is how it goes until it goes a different way.

—-

When I was a kid, provably nineteen, my friends and I drive three and a half hours north of where we lived to spend the weekend at a campground. It was an exercise in liberation from our parents.

As part of the trip, we filled the trunk of my car with four cases of inexpensive beer. Between the three of us, we had just more than forty-eight hours to drink ninety-six beers.

To say the effort was futile would be an understatement.

I don’t think about it often, but in this moment I have and while I cannot say I’m proud of having done it, I also have no regrets.

Only ever forward.

—-

The following is a list of persons I could live the rest of my days without contacting:

The person in that state.

The person in that town.

The person that works at that place.

The person that did that one thing.

The person that did that other thing.

The people that live over there.

Most of the people that I have never met.

—-

Auto Zone and a dozen crushes through the final years of high school. A backroad and a pothole and you can run all the way down to the water if you like. The more you listen to the music the more words begin to form and fall out. One day down the road it’ll all be perfect and you’ll be dead and it’ll all be alright. A garbage can, arithmetic and a kaleidoscope. A scaled scale and a scattered secondary. A lost cause on a causeway across the biggest lake in Louisiana. Bust a hole in the fiberglass and be forgiven instantly. You’ll figure it out. You always figure it out.

—-

The lonesome remains of a million cattails line the dormant grass ditches that criss cross their way across Northern Minnesota. Forty-foot birches, less their leaves, rise up in their bright white and lean into the open spaces like adoring fans against the walls of the halls that give entrance to the fields of the favorite football teams. Fragile brown limbs of forgotten white spruce trees sink into the scrub and red framed sumac.

It’s winter here.

—-

You are an old bus on blocks in a yard full of dogs. I am an old house, boarded up after years of neglect. We are the dinosaurs off the freeway near Cabazon. Indifferent. Abandoned. Forgotten.

—-

A low flying prop plane and the checkerboard awning. Traffic backed up for miles. Moving trucks and motorcycles. Pot holes and trailer parks in the far north metro.

—-

The kids in my elementary school taught me about the value, be it real or implied, of home ownership.

—-

I’m going to have a section of highway dedicated to your memory and once a month my friends and I are going to go out to it and pick up trash. In the meantime, thousands of regular folks are going to drive by the sign with your name on it and wonder who you are and what you did to get someone to dedicate a section of highway to your memory.

—-

It’ll be a Friday night before you realize the humor of the situation. It’ll be a Friday night before you realize you should’ve stayed at work for another couple of years. It’ll be a Friday night before you find yourself in the Indian restaurant again. It’ll be a Friday night before you retire. It’ll be a Friday night before you expire.

—-

That part is over. Understand it. Embrace it. Live it. That part is over.

—-

Another church basement. Another hour-long look in the mirror. Tin foil and torn cardboard boxes. Towels wrapped in plastic and tucked into shelves underneath the counter. Condiments as far as you can see. Tee shirts stuffed into boxes sitting on the floor. Make a donation. Consider your options. Make sure you park between the signs.

—-

Hoka orthopedic

Hey Dude

Carhartt

Busch Light

Spitter cups

Hints of misogony and domestic violence.

Archery

Bloody Mary’s

A free car and some poorly painted cups aimed at permanent trailer campground culture.

Does it have a throttle?

Nachos

Minnow races

Three hot tubs, a steady stream of mixed drinks and can koozies.

—-

I saw the inside of that mobile home and I thought about how much I know it and it made me think long and hard about the nice things I’ve chased for most of my life.

—-

Winners are never judged by how they win, that is saved for the losers.

—-

I don’t really care how things came to be or how they turn out in the future. The reality that surrounds me in this moment is simply what it is, it cannot be different. How I respond to this moment is all I have. This is nothing new. This concept is as old as man himself. The truth that we, as humans, seek to understand our existence is perplexing. Things are and then they are not. Everything balances. Words are just a coping mechanism, like numbers. Feelings are the brains way of transcribing words to offset other words. Today I will practice to abandon words.

—-

Out here in the middle of your life. Working the opening shift at the Village Inn and writing schedules while most folks are starting the coffee pot at home. Overweight. Under paid. Fundamentally ill-prepared to take advantage of the opportunities presented to most. Hot, black coffee. Two eggs, over-easy. A plastic water cup and a fork and knife that appear to be crafted from a single sheet of aluminum foil. The drive south. The endless miles and the uncontrollable, wandering thoughts. Unsatisfied in your work, but you put your head down and do it. For twenty-four years you just shut your mouth and you do it because that’s the hand you were dealt.

What happens when it ends? What happens the timer runs out? When do you start living for you? On the drive north? Maybe East? Maybe never?

Paper napkins and a stack of pie plates. The coffee tastes like every other breakfast place in North America. The guy reading his book on an iPad and drinking Diet Coke for breakfast. The elderly couple that’s probably been here every Saturday for a decade. Gordon Lightfoot fills the air. This goddamn town. This goddamn life.

Use the template to make certain everything is even, even though we all know that cards are stacked and even is a dream for folks that will always have less. Microwave the barrel of gravy to help the line cook that lost his way a dozen years ago at a party. Leave the egg on the uneaten pancakes. Pay your bill. Leave a tip. Be kind. Move on.

The cycle is endless.

—-

Fashion forward dog walker with coffee in hand and a straw fedora. Houseless down jacket with a sleeping bag. Two joggers with bottles strapped to their hands from the arms outreached from the BQ jacket. Walmart built this place. It exists as the enemy to each of our dreams and we embrace it, as it’s the thing that we all crave and demand attention from.

Here we are.

—-

Fifty miles in two days plus 1500 miles plus work plus two lunches and some tan lines. Alligator arms and a southern drawl. Extra large shirts and minimum wage.

Southern culture is an automobile and a penchant for sweet tea. Arrest your development and abandon your insight. Gas station coffee and a tunnel under the freeway.

Write words. Take pictures. Compare yourself to your reflection.

Ride bikes. Have fun. Be nice.

—-

A Waffle House on the side of the highway in the same town you found yourself sick in seven years ago. After New York, before Minneapolis. Sidetracked and sidelined. Skateboards and brand new trucks. A drowning death hangs on the wall and another new employee fills out paperwork at the counter. It’ll be a stack of coffee cups at your funeral, young man.

Separately, as mobile homes, they seem rather permanent in their parked positions.

—-

I often experience moments in my life, when I am a witness to another’s existence, that I am able to imagine myself in their position or age or physical or economic state. Obviously, my perspective of these individuals is based on my own assumption of their status in a heirarchy of statuses, be they real or imagined.

Perhaps this makes me empathetic? Perhaps this is the common human existence?

—-

Another church basement and another round of having to acknowledge my inherent skill that is confessing the sins of others.

—-

I don’t much care for white light. I prefer yellow light and when I come across white light it sort of makes my skin crawl, but not in a dramatic way. It just kind of bothers me and creates an unsettled air. I’m not certain what it is about white light. I guess I just don’t like it.

—-

I’m tired. I spent the better part of today in the car and in a terrible mood. As I look back on it, I spent most of today silently  projecting expectations onto folks that weren’t present to accept or deny them. A very healthy exercise for no one.

—-

Tuesday morning in the city on the big lake and the lobby is filled with life. Somewhere between now and an earlier version of me I lost sight of a lot of things. I can’t see the real from the imagined. I can’t feel the sense of belonging. I can’t imagine the sound of love. I have a coffee cup filled with warm, brown water. I have a box of chocolate on the floor of the passenger seat. I have a desire to create and enough insecurity to keep me from it because somewhere in my mind I keep telling myself that if what I crafts doesn’t inspire others it’s a waste of my time.

So I sit here, looking through the glass at a couple dozen strangers and I wonder if they worry about the same things? I wonder if their minds are filled with the urge to produce from the eye and the mind and the hand? I wonder if they are all compelled to tell a story so that the life of some other might find benefit? I wonder if any of these casual passersby are feeling drawn to writing down their thoughts this morning and I realize that the answer is likely no and so it continues on.

—-

I wonder what it feels like to be the first person to bring meth into an otherwise fully functioning community?

—-

The workout center in a hotel. An empty elevator. A pizza restaurant on top of the hill. Conversations over a glass of red wine. To-go containers and some remarks about fibromyalgia. The sun is setting behind me and my legs are tired. I’m stuck between feeling compelled to lead and understanding that it’s not my place. Shades drawn. Casinos on the horizon. Talks of snow and the lack there of.

I wonder if these people have ever left the Midwest?

Ice water. Landscape. Parking lot. A wedding in the west. A box full of cigarettes. A carton overflowing with bourbon. An animal zoo and a couple of cages to hold back the anger.

Twice they’ve remarked about how they won’t be gambling. One statement about flights and flight prices. Two references to hotels and the choices available in and around Reno.

Overhang. Seagulls. Red pepper flakes.

It’ll be California all over again if you’re not fucking careful. There’s a real solid chance that you’re never going to understand anyway.

Taxi the runway. Fly away, fly away, fly away.

Red shirt. Blue shirt. No shirt. We’re at war with ourselves right now and we don’t even know it.

An election year. A trip to Boston. A box full of cucumber sandwiches. Don’t forget to order the electric bikes.

Cancer. Country music. Endless roads. A community college. A basket full of candy and twenty cents if you can stay awake past nine.

—-

Early morning ATM and the panicked look of somebody that wants to buy drugs, but doesn’t have the money.

—-

“Fair means one side got exactly what it wanted in a way that the other side can’t complain about it. There’s no such thing as fair.”

—-

Four Noble Truths:

The truth of suffering

The truth of the cause of suffering

The truth of the end of suffering

The truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering

Five Mindfulness Trainings:

Speech

Nourishment and Healing

True Happiness

Reverence for Life

True Love

—-

You can build a house wherever you like. You can build a house on a hill or in a valley. You can build a house above ground or under ground. You can build a house however you like with whatever you like. You can build a house and you can go fuck yourself.

—-

I’m sitting in a diner in Fargo. It’s cold outside and the sun is just coming up.

Behind me there is a group of older men. I’d put them in their sixties. They’re laughing and carrying on while they drink their coffee, like a bunch of school boys.

In another booth there is a woman and her teenage son. They’re having breakfast, much like I am.

Behind the counter is a woman working.

As the morning unfolds, the group of old men start telling jokes. One of the jokes ends with the punch line, “Beer. Pussy.”

I am actually appalled.

Where the fuck are we as a people that it’s okay for a bunch of old men to talk to each other like they’ve already had a bunch of beers and they’re all alone in the garage?

Would these men talk like this in front of their mothers?

What is the example they’re attempting to set?

How old am I and why am I so disgusted by the polarization that is happening in the communities I frequent?

I feel like we’re already engulfed in a civil war and it makes me sick to think about the world my children will inherit.

Yes, bikes are cool, but being nice to each other is cooler and having some general public decency is even cooler.

—-

I accept your death, as I didn’t look forward to it. I didn’t expect it beyond the reality of your age. I had no premonition to your demise ahead or behind another. I accept your death. I don’t grieve you. I don’t deny you. I am not angry at your passing and I wish to make no bargains to return your life. I accept your death.

—-

Sunburnt and faded trailer paint. A hundred white crosses in the San Juan Mission Cemetary. Plywood on the windows. Four lane roads that merge to two and back again. A mobile home junkyard. An abandon family dollar.

—-

I saw a fat man on a four wheeler pulling a garbage can on wheels up his driveway. I love America.

—-

I had a handful of moments today where I get like all of the knowledge I have ever known escaped me. It was as though I had forgotten how to be. It wasn’t dramatic and there was no immediate suffering.

It happened while I was working and doing something that had done thousands of times.

I left the experience confused and conflicted about what I actually know and whether or not I am confident in what I do.

I hadn’t had this experience prior to today.

—-

“Technical perfection doesn’t matter if all you’re going to do with it is pander to the powers that be”

—

Having a wholesome mission statement does not absolve the sin of using it to bolster and inflate one’s ego.

—-

I saw a dead coyote on the side of the road.

I saw a tent set up near a construction site complete with bouquets of flowers and a stack of bottled water.

I saw a family of three ordering pretzels and soda in the mall well before noon.

—-

I met you when you didn’t live here and I don’t know you now. I’m not certain I ever knew you and I know for a fact you never knew me. Here’s to hoping our paths never cross.

—-

I didn’t do that much work and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Instead, I waited patiently for the pizza while the winds outside blew. Gales they called them and they made white caps on the lake. The rain came down sideways and the bank accounts ran to zero. Discomfort. This comfort. It ran around and so did I. We both got lost and then one day we were found.

—-

I’ll just have a water, please.

—-

If you’re lucky, your ego will die before you do. If you’re unlucky, your ego will kill you.

Either way, you die.

—-

I ended up an old man, hardened by the realities of life. Making money just to spend money. Working so hard to get ahead of some manufactured space predetermined to be negative and something to achieve past. This was my own error and, in that vulnerable, lonely moment when I was alone in the pizza parlor, I was reminded of it all when the family of three walked in and their little girl reminded me of you and the breakfasts we shred when you were a baby.

Some days I feel like I failed as a father.

Some days I feel like I have succeeded as a father.

My feelings are irrelevant outside of the mirror.

Suit up. Show up. Care and be kind.

—-

You will address the reality of your death whether you have prepared for it or not.

—-

I remember lying in the bed and the dog would lay there between us until one of us moved in some way that disrupted him and then he would freak out and climb off the bed to go sleep on the floor. I remember that apartment so well. The hardwood floors and the bathroom tiles. The little cubby holes above the hallway.The thick coats of white paint that covered everything. I remember building the tables and the shelf in the kitchen and making pancakes and eating cottage cheese with cut up pickles. I remember it all so well and they’re all just memories I’ve packed up in the back of my mind. They’re books I’ve stacked in the corner. I walk past them and recognize their spines, but I never open them because I can’t stomach the stories. All those stories. That apartment. That time. So wild. So intense. The laughing. The arguing. The fighting. The screaming. The silence. The sleeping on the floor against the couch as some attempt to find comfort in some small space where my feelings wouldn’t get smashed. The hours long walks alone in the dark. Up seventh to Broadway all the way to 102nd. Over to fifth and up to the park and back again. Walking alone in the rain to give you space and some time to cool off when I was the one who was cold and had to buy a jacket. I thought the space was helpful and loving and kind, but it only widened the gap. Hindsight is incredible. Letting go is the real key though. These books. These memories. They are a part of my experience and as such deserve their place on the shelf. They don’t need to be read again. They need to be acknowledged for what they are and that is the past. They ought to end up in some Tiny Free Library. They are not throw aways, but rather they are text books to be given away to those that need them. They are my notes and the professor has said that they will be allowed. They are the past. Not the present. Not now. Not tomorrow. It was a whirlwind. A tornado. A roller coaster. It was a lot of things. It was. It isn’t is. These books are a mirror. An opportunity to look at myself and see where I am hanging on and from what I should be letting go. These books offer a reflection that defines my features and my beauty and my strengths. These books and this mirror show me my shortcomings and like red ink on the rough draft of my final paper they show me the areas in which I can improve. These books.

—-

A dark box in an empty room. An evening inside the blackout curtains. Cold dinners washed down with stale crackers and cigarettes. Dogs that walk themselves through woods across the street from the old folks home. Here is your fate. Here is your one way bus ticket. Here is your aftermath. Find yourself in the stillness of the funeral parlor surrounded by the emptiness left by your abandon. Find yourself in the streetcar bound for nowhere with an empty grocery bag and a rent check that bounced. Look backward toward your future and realize your present self is a mirror of your youth. You are lost looking for a road map. You’re trying to find that gas station in the desert that you passed a couple days ago. You’re trying to find yourself. You and your suitcase. All dressed up for the big party. All dressed up with nowhere to be. Your are you. You are nobody.

—-

Take your pills. Take them all you wrinkled old man. Take all those pills and go lie down. When you wake up, don’t call out for me. Instead, just lie there in your bed and wait for the strength to do things all by yourself. For when you wake, I will be gone. Gone for good this time. It’s been a long an bending path and you’ve hung in there like a champ, but it’s time to move on. Now, take your pills and get on up to bed.

—-

Two flat tires on a BMW and a bike ride through the poorest neighborhoods in Minneapolis. East to West and South to back again. So many silent sporters moving around in little herds of twos and threes and fives. The cabin’s fever has broken and it’s sweat pours down the faces of so many. Manicured lawns and patio furniture moving themselves out of winter storage. Spring has sprung in this metropolitan zoo and the animals have escaped their cages.

—-

Stifled speech stuffed deep down inside for decades. Fortresses constructed of fear and anxiety defend emotions that cannot be identified. A thousand forms of detachment liberate the soul from ever truly experiencing the pain attached to loving. The art of letting go submits to the art of war. This is my kingdom. These are my people. Peasants ruling the castle and the kings left out to die in the fields. Alone, the jesters walk the apple orchards hoping to find solace their quiet presence.

—

The apples of my eye and dirt and rocks and sticks and water. Wading into the deepest drop off while a man and his wife adorn scuba gear in the middle of the great north woods. Five shirtless boys holler and run and jump while two of their mothers, carefully covered in their full coverage swimsuits, capture photographs on their phones. This is the summer that exceeds all other summers. This is the pinnacle of my fatherhood and an eye opener to the possibilities that lie therein. Matchless fires, hammocks and fully cooked bratwursts bookend random passersby as they gaze upon the wonders of a modern day mobile treehouse. Our little fort in the air. Orange in all of its glory, it has proved to be the gateway to our wild side. Fifteens and thirty-ones and hand made pegs post holes in the story that we’ll talk about down the road. It is July in the Midwest and there is nowhere I’d rather be.

—-

There is an intersection in life where two roads cross each other and neither leads to the destination you had planned. To get to this intersection, build something amazing. Give it away to everyone you meet. Hold it to its own light and marvel at its ability to bring people together. Build it up big and then set it aside. Pursue another avenue as your irreverence for the first project is fueled by someone you're trying to please. Pursue this new adventure with everything you have. Get up early. Stay up late. Abandon friendships. Abandon hobbies. Pursue this second object with every ounce. Climb ladders and stairs and hills. Climb. When you think you've hit the high mark, that is where the intersection is. This crossroads will appear when you've all but burned every bridge from the first and emptied every ounce into the second. This crossroads will appear when what you've chased in the second is snatched out from under you. This crossroads will only become real when all the doubts you've had are realized in a quick conversation with somebody that "thought you already knew". Find the crossroads. Choose your next line carefully. Go forward and never, ever look back.

—-

There are a thousand questions an only seven answers as the answers are interchangeable to an infinite degree. The degrees of which are separated by time and place and a change of clothes. Inside. Outside. Scramble to find your footing in the scree. Tumble down the slope and burn your hands on the rope. Your gym class is a hiding spot for the failing academic. White lines and yellow lines and a gas station in the middle of the night. Slanted radio stations and a thunderous scent from underneath the hood. You find it if you looked and always wonder if you could, but you can’t so you won’t.

—-

I slammed two dirty, crumpled twenty dollar bills on the counter and asked for a bottle of Old Grandad. The clerk, an unassuming man is his 50's, turned to the shelf behind him, extended his under-exercised arm above his head and pulled a dusty bottle off the shelf. Like a surgeon, he shoved it into a brown paper sack and silently stood it on the counter. It was obvious this stuff wasn't flying off the shelves, but neither was his approach to customer service. It was late and I'm certain he was tired and not in the mood to face whatever his reality was that had him working in a tiny, corner bodega selling cigarettes and liquor to underage kids and skid row bums. To credit myself, I am neither of those things.

I am middle aged, employed and relatively healthy. I have a small circle of friends and a reputation of being a pretty standup guy. On this night, however, I was willing to throw it all in the street and go for broke.

Six months ago I left my marriage. I left two kids at home. I left it all. I left a house and a comfortable life in pursuit of my happiness. In the time that has passed I have had moments of it. Mostly though, I struggle with the loneliness I've found. I struggle with the idea that my kids miss me as much as I miss them. I struggle with making ends meet and I struggle with knowing I put a financial strain on my kid’s mom. I struggle a lot and while I spend a lot of time trying to find the positive in everything, there are plenty of moments that are just plain shitty...so on this night, I was throwing in the towel. On this night, I just plain ran out of fucks to give.

The old man put a ten, a five, two singles and a handful of coins on the counter beside the bottle. He never said thank you. In fact, he never said hello. He never actually said anything. I'm not certain he can actually speak. It's irrelevant. His interaction with me was not important to the experience I was seeking. What I was looking for was 750ml of mind numbing liquor. I chose Old Grandad because somewhere in my melancholy mind I harbored some grand vision of an all seeing camera that recorded my every move. Some sort of lifelong recording that would playback at my poorly attended funeral. To appease this seemingly never ending montage, I thought it fitting to black out with some kind of tip of the cap to those that went before me. My family tree was blooming with drunks, so why not?

What happened next was pretty typical. I scooped the change into my hand and shoved it into my pocket. I grabbed the bagged bottled and stuck it under my right arm. I pulled my hood up over my head and leaned my left shoulder into the frosty-edged glass door that separated me and the old man from the frigid wind that howled outside. As I set out to make the several block journey home, I heard the old guy spin the metallic wheel on a lighter. I was gone before I could smell his cigarette smoke.

The walk home didn't take as long as it could have. I was mentally in a hurry and only focused on two things. One was getting home quickly to tap into this bottle that contained my long lost friend and the other was wallowing so deep in my own self-pity that the first one seemed like a good idea at all in the first place.

Inside my place I didn't even take off my coat or my shoes. Something I almost always did. Instead, I walked directly over to the couch, sat down, in the dark, pulled the rest of my night from its paper cocoon, cracked the thin metal cap to the left to detach it from its safety seal and tipped the bottle up to my lips. The first push of brown liquid burned it's way across my lips and tongue. It slid down my throat, torching everything it touched. Warmth poured over me and for a moment I was free. Free from the bondage I had prescribed myself. Free from the burden of trying to find balance in this new life. Free from myself. For a moment. It didn't last. The second swig was smoother than the first. The potency and romance of the whole idea wore off quickly. At this point the mission was confined to four simple tasks. Smoke as many cigarettes as possible. Get drunk. Black out. Pass out.

I don't recall too much of what happened next. I know there were subsequent swigs and pulls. I know, from the butt filled ashtray and the burn marks in the wooden coffee table I smoked at least a pack of cigarettes. I know, simply from a physiological standpoint, that the alcohol in the bottle prevailed in my bloodstream at some point. I know, in hindsight, that I passed out, as I woke up on the floor in my coat and my shoes. I know the bottle that was once full was now empty and across the room in a pile of broken glass. I know that at some point I threw said bottle because just above where I found it resting was a dent in the Sheetrock and several broken picture frames. I know I blacked out because I have no recollection of any of these events. I know I accomplished my mission, but failed at the same time. I know I had expectations for all of my negative, depression based feelings to disappear through all of this. I know that didn't happen. I know this morning the remorse is unbearable, the headache is loud and obnoxious and I am still the same, middle aged man when I look in the mirror. I know that I am still me and I will always be me. I know that this chaotic trip into intoxication is worthless and futile. I know this. All of it. Every single goddamn word of it. A waste. A waste of time. A waste of energy. A waste of me. A waste of my life.

It's been fifteen and a half years since I drank. I don't think about it often, but when I do it usually looks like the story above. I usually have grand visions of some romantic, dark saga where I am the only actor on a stage in a theater without an audience. In my mind and on paper it always sounds so amazing. I'm not certain how it plays out in real life...I hope I never find out.

—-

Cigarettes and some chamomile tea on a terra cotta tiled patio just steps away from the chaotic center of republican politics. Not a ton of hustle and bustle, but there are a handful of homeless folks sleeping a block away. It’s a different place and a different time and the looks of ignorance and a forgotten past linger like fog on a cold morning in the Mississippi River valley. Miles and miles to get here and be here in this moment, drinking this drink and thinking these thoughts. Alone in this loneliness wondering which words will capture the sentiment and worrying that anything that’s chosen will just end up being sediment, or cement or some other form of compressed rocks. Not dissimilar to that of an old abandoned pool in the backyard of some long forgotten home in some poor neighborhood in Phoenix. Or maybe they’ll be like the garbage and weed covered makeup of the Indian School spillway in Albuquerque that runs from the Sandia’s down to the fabricated river under Interstate 40. There’s no way to determine the outcome of ones choices, especially insofar as words are concerned. The best bet is to fire away from the tip of the fingers and just put it out there. Let it be digested and consumed by the reader. That is, after all, the purpose of art.

—

Numbers. They are our identity. They are everything to us. They are the tool by which we measure everything. How old we are. How young we are. How much we earn. How far we have come. How far we have to go. What time we need to wake up. What time we need to go to sleep. Even the title of this post, those that came before it and those that will come after it. Everything in our modern lives is surrounded by numbers. For what? 

It might be worth examining the moments in any given day that aren't submerged in numbers? Numbers can't really be attached to the innate senses most of us share? We can't smell or taste or hear or touch or see anything's  approximate distance from us. Yet we constantly attach numbers to everything. And why not? Is counting not one of the things we learn first as infants? Are numerical values not driven into us throughout our fundamental education? If we examine our lives under the largest microscope we can find, are we able to truly identify the things in any given day that are not connected to numbers? Do we quantify a hug from a loved one by attaching a number to it? Do we estimate the numerical value of a letter received in the mail from an old friend? Do we statistically analyze the effects of having a door held for us as we pass through it? No. Are our lives truly not defined by those few moments a day when we lose sight of the numbers and just embrace the present and all it has to offer? Do we not find more pleasure in experiencing the limitless world of our natural senses than by those that we create mentally? 

Our minds are impressive tools capable of incredible things. If we muddy them up by constantly addressing the numbers we've created to identify things, we are missing the purpose of our lives. 

Numbers are for measuring. Measuring is for comparison. Comparison is for judgement. Judgement is for ego. Ego is for death.

—-

Wrenches and old, crinkled beer cans litter the top of an oil stained wooden work bench. Sawdust covers portions of the floor and hangs like forgotten Christmas lights from long abandoned spider webs. Slow, depressing tunes filter through the cigarette smoke that lingers in the motionless air. It's hot. It's summer. This is the place where the things get built. This is where the hand is king.

—-

I hold three cards in my hand. Not one of which is closer to my chest than the others. I will not reveal my secrets. I will not let go of my burdens. To my deathbed I shall carry these. I shall package them all up nice and neat in my hanging baskets of pomp and circumstance. I’ll get the dogs lined up on the carpet. Their hair freshly cleaned and combed. It’s all a facade. It’s all part of the show. It’s all part of this dream I’ve been having for years. A dream that’s plagued my hours awake. A dream in which I wander around on a mountain of metaphors looking for the setting sun. A dream where direction is useless. Is it a dream, though? Is it my subconscious? Where am I? How did I get here?

—-

Tonight, along the side of an empty stretch of Highway in the flattest part of the middle of nowhere, I saw a woman standing over the body of her recently deceased husband. The scene itself wasn’t gruesome, but it certainly was tragic and heartbreaking. I passed the whole thing at sixty-five miles per hour so I didn’t get to take everything in as fully as I might have preferred considering the circumstances. At the moment, and in hindsight my heart breaks for her loss. The expression on her face was one of absolute abandon. In one moment, everything in her life is as normal as it’s been for as long as she cared to remember. In the next moment, everything in her life is in upheaval. Uncertainty. Sorrow. Pain. Agony. Heartbreak. All of these things just standing there in the tall grass beyond the rocky shoulder of an aging piece of America’s infrastructure.

—-

I saw my own death last night. In a dream. In a way that only a dream could produce, I saw myself lying in a grave and standing above it at the same time. It was a funeral for me, but I was the only one there. No one to direct. No one to weep. No one to toss dirt onto the coffin that didn't exist. Just me. Two versions. One alive and grieving, and the other stone stiff at the bottom of a hole.

I didn't look for meaning when I awoke this morning. I didn't try and connect the dots that got me to that point. I didn't. There were no good feelings and no bad. Things just simply were exactly what they were. One human body standing above a hole looking into it, and one human body lying in the hole looking out. Perhaps there is some deeper lesson to be learned, but instead of analyzing it, I simply acknowledged it for what it was, a dream.

Our positions on this earth are temporary. Our purpose is for no one to decide but ourselves. If something is standing in the way of your happiness, step aside and continue. If something feels like it's "off", it probably is and you should do something about it...now. I am responsible for me. You are responsible for you. Anyone that knows me, knows that I bleed this philosophy. It is true today more than ever.

—-

Sunshine pouring through the cloudy, permanently weather stained windows. Hot, fresh coffee steaming in an old, dented cup resting on a table of worn wood and rusted nails. A book about a bike race that used to consume me sitting quietly under a stack of poorly drawn drawings. Soft, well crafted music fills the air. This is my morning. This is how I am starting my day. Four out seven are similar depending on the status of the giant ball of fire in the sky. I prefer it this way. The remaining three are begun in darkness, under the veil of night that has not yet broken. My schedule is peculiar and doesn't allow my body to set itself. The result is perpetual tiredness. A constant yawn. It's who I am. It's the bed I've made. I enjoy it, but I know it's rough. It's rough on me and it's rough on those around me. That said, it has allowed me to look at all of it as training for that massive endurance event that has yet to present itself. Everyday is training. Every day is suffering. Every day is a success.

—-

Early morning entries and a database full of empty trees. Fall has fallen and the air is crisp. Leaves litter the pavement and the dog wanders around the yard hoping to find some hopping treat. There is no rest for the tired and weary, only another cup of coffee and a cold Adirondack chair. The hoods are up and the ankles uncovered. Darkness. Quiet. Morning.

—-

Take the vitamin. Repeat the repetition. It’s getting dark and after yesterday you’re probably real close to the slope.

It lingers.

It always lingers.

—-

A semi-regular stranger that visits late in the evening. Miles of broken white lines and anonymous headlights punctuate. Eighty or one hundred or a thousand. The number is irrelevant. Broken. Busted. Heartbroken. Abandoned. Worthless. Empty. Forgive. Move forward. There is no backwards. There is nothing to go back to. The past is passed. One room on a merry go round. Each week is a mirror of the previous and a cookie cutter for the future. Spinning. Passing the same rock underwater and believing every time that it is new. Keep walking. Keep moving. Don’t stop. Never stop.

—-

A Tibetan restaurant smashed into the quiet polish neighborhood that used to be primarily filled with first generation immigrants. Two different styles of tile line the floor and a mixture of photos and poor paintings and some kitschy modern humor make up the exterior of this setback interior. Chop sticks and hot tea and an ice water. Six tables out of fourteen occupied by folks from up the street and down. Take time and set it aside. Find a space that suits you and become a fixture. Lights and televisions and some strange electronic music. Where do you go from here? Back to a headache? Under the sink, covered in water? Take the blanket out to the trash and shake your fist and call it what it is. This isn’t your past and it certainly won’t be your last. It’s the present and the future and a cacophony of shoes. It’s a rattle can paint job and a piece of history that can’t quite be resurrected to look like it once did. Words on top of words.

Pause.

Have another bite and wash it down with some more of that green tea. It feels good to stop for a second. It feels good to feel good.

Pause.

Outside cold. Inside warm. There are many among us that don’t have the luxury of choice. Many who wander aimlessly trying to find some level of unknown comfort. They exist adjacent to us. At the edge of our excess. Homeless. Vagrant. Transient. Drug addicted. Alcoholic. Criminal. Problems for the state. Problems for the feds. Problems for everyone except us.

The problem is that we have forgotten that which separates us is the same thing that connects us. The problem is that we have forgotten the importance of choice. The problem is that we have forgotten the outcomes of choice. Our distance is short. Our shortsightedness is blindness. Our blindness is ignorance. Our ignorance is our motivation. Our motivation is our accelerant. Our fire is us and there is no shortage of fuel.

—-

What is the fear? What is the root? Where does it come from and how can it be boiled down to its most primitive state? Anxiety? Depression? Some overwhelming lack of personal understanding?

It could certainly be all of these or none of these or some combination of them. It could certainly be. It’s definitely worse when the sun doesn’t rise as high in the sky. It’s certainly worse when the air grows cold and the ground firms up.

It happens every year. It happens every Sunday. It happens again and again and there does not seem to be an end in sight. So the words come out. The words come out in some feeble attempt to wrangle whatever elusive beast this might be.

It’s like some kind of bizarre metronome that cannot seem to be stopped. There’s no finger that can be lodged between it and it’s fulcrum. It just sits there swinging back and forth perpetually. On and on and on and on

Sleep on it.

—-

Apathetic service in a space where service is the primary function. Lounging carefully and quietly behind laptops and ceramic mugs and some overpriced snacks. Found the spot. The quiet space that isn’t the bed and it isn’t the driveway. Perhaps that other space that can produce endorphins and good vibes. Maybe it isn’t this space? Maybe it’s another. The important piece is to keep getting out in the world. Try new things. Go new places. Feel things that are pleasant. Look out the window. Go through the door. Walk, but don’t play the drums. Those are for drummers. Same with guitars. Those belong to rock stars and people named Bruce and your name isn’t Bruce. It’s Chris. That is your name and drumming and guitar playing are not for you. You write words and take pictures. Stick with that. Stay away from caffeine, too. A cup in the morning is good for you, but after that drink water or tea. Sugary drinks are bad. You know this. Stay away. Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey. Lyrics. Airwaves. Brick walls and a countertop table that slides when it’s pushed. Not in a good way. In a bad way. Like the kind of way that suggests that maybe the construction is poor. It’s likely not a refection on the curators of this space. Rather a solution to a problem that once existed and then no longer did, but somehow has become a different problem that currently exists on a list toward the bottom. It’s just a table and this is just a coffee shop and nobody or any one thing is perfect. Everything is fine. It always has been. It always will be. Especially with headphones. Or at least that’s the impression I get from looking around this room. Headphones and coffee cups. Or mugs. I can’t be certain as the aura here is certainly one of art and artistic value. So cup is probably degrading or demeaning. I bet these are mugs. Fancy ones. Ones that were hand-crafted by some struggling genius that has yet to be discovered. Fired in a kiln that was made by hand behind some old rustic farmhouse. These are the mugs that will be handed down from generation to generation. The kind that will end up under glass in some museum of the future. But…how can that be? How could that be the future for all these mugs if they’re here? Here lining these shelves and waiting quietly for some new address to call home? Perhaps I have it all wrong? Perhaps there is no museum? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

—-

The second part is more strange than the first. Football on the tv and a quick switch of some parts on the car or truck or whatever it is we choose to call it. It sits a little higher than one would expect, but it’s definitely smaller than one might suspect. It’s cold, but not dangerously. Just enough chill to put a bitter wind down the spine, or up from the bottom of an untucked shirt. Cold enough to turn hands into slow moving objects. The slow that prevents thumbs from moving when the mind says “go”. There are books on the shelf and that’s no dramatic segue. It’s just an observation from the vantage point. A giant painting and a feisty dog and a brand new blanket. Candy bars for dinner and a reminder to fill up the coffee maker. Tomorrow makes five and the following six. Go seven and then eight and nine and ten. Lose track. Go back. Rhyme time. Prime time. Analogous. Analysis. Paralysis. Stuck here in this chair or on this bed and plagued by this unending head. No pillow big enough for the mazes and corridors that wind their way through the present and the past. Make it last. Make it fast. Fast. Fest. Rest. Under. Over. All the way around. Come back to the beginning and secure yourself a spot in line. Wait there for the bouncer or the door man or the ticket taker. Wait there for the undertaker and the grim reaper. Wait there. Just wait there and eventually your time will come.

—-

A weekly recurring loss. For twenty years. A vacancy repeated without respite. Now, and for the last five years, every seven days the feeling returns. It occurs in such a way that I am inclined to want to go to that space whenever I have a moment to myself. The alternative is submersion into work of fun. Some kind of absent therapy design to disguise my loss as some kind of ghost. A ghost that can’t exist because ghosts aren’t real. Yet every week I go back to the same place. Mentally I know there is an answer, but physically I cannot manifest it. No amount of self-knowledge can break the routine. Awareness is only good for preventing the unthinkable and it does a fine job of that. It’s like the record is scratched, always jumping back to the point from which it began. Sunday into Monday. Find some music. Feel it. Go there. Come back.

Moreover, my want to return to this place has to be rooted in the common thought process that is, feeling the loss is grieving the loss and through grief comes closure. The problem here is that because the loss is recurring, there is no time to grieve it and therefore no time to move through it and beyond it. It has persistently stood in the way of me getting anything done outside of employment and that is only true because I have for twenty years equated employment to success in dealing with this absence. It’s a cycle. A circular cycle that feels like a tornado at times and a toilet bowl at others. The speed of the cyclone is irrelevant to the damage. Onward. Forward. Smile. Everything is fine.

—-

You are awesome. You are a thinker and a dreamer and bag of snacks. You are intelligent and charismatic and you like to eat fruit roll-ups and drink juice out of tiny boxes with a little plastic straw. You get tiny cartons of milk for a quarter from a push cart in the hallway and you enjoy the parachute day more than any of the others in gym class. You are in elementary school and you’re all grown up all at once. You find pleasure in the outdoors and you don’t read much, but your head contains a ton of knowledge on a variety of subjects. You write words as if they’re being spoken and you frame photographs in a way that feels pleasant to view. You are a bike rider and a car driver and you project an attitude of not giving a fuck even though anyone that knows you knows that you actually do. You eat food that tastes good even though you know it’s bad for you. You smoke cigarettes and find pleasure in riding your bike through the woods. Road rides turn you off and you no longer see the value in riding in circles. You are purpose oriented and goal driven to the extent that goal achieves some internal accomplishment. You are you and you are everyone else. The details might be different, but the underlying drivers are the same.

—-

All alone in a box on a street where a shoe hangs silently from a street sign. It’s some version of Franklin’s Tower minus all the chords and the refrain. It’s a little dance that’s done in the early hours of every day. It’s a dance performed by the aging and the young. It’s a dance that doesn’t have an end and a dance that doesn’t have a partner. It’s a quick exchange in the bus stop and a hustle for one that leaves the other filling up buckets and showering trash into the curb. This isn’t some nine to five gig with a lunch break and some posters on the wall about burnout. This is every city everywhere and an underbelly that doesn’t quite fit the shirt. It’s not tailored and it makes most vomit if they’re not too busy looking the other way. It’s a realness and a real mess and a landslide in an area that’s only ever been made of soil, except there’s more concrete here than one could ever find in a swimming pool or a skatepark in some small Wisconsin town along all but abandoned highway.

—-

The cycle breaks when the cycle breaks. Conversations get had and awareness is developed and dice get rolled. Somehow acknowledging self.

A positive mental attitude. An understanding of time and space. The triggers didn’t trigger. The gun never fired. It cannot even be determined that a bullet was ever loaded into the chamber. Perhaps the gun only shoots water? Perhaps the gun isn’t even a gun? Does it matter? Do the reasons or the causes even matter? Is the hatter mad? Is the man a dad? Do the trips down seventh and the stops at the stop drive themselves inside like a nail? They do not. At least not in this case as there is no hammer. In this case the case was premeditated when the incense burned and the smoke filled the nostrils. In this case the case held four clean aces and a face that wouldn’t let the librarian read it.

A new jacket and some time behind the wheel. All the music in the world couldn’t muster up the well because all is well as long as the well doesn’t well. If that makes sense.

Hot coffee and waffles and some bacon that easily folds in half. A bowling alley and the boss and some discussion about being sad. Riding mopeds down the stairs under the influence is not the same as counting sheep.

Words.

Say them to everyone, but hear them yourself. Messages in the messaging. A note in the bottle. Throw it out and it will come back. Boomerang.

—-

Why do you get up so early just to write things down? It’s foolish. You’re foolish. All those lies. If you had only been honest with me. What does that even mean? It’s almost as if you have no concrete knowledge as to where your bread is buttered.

A fucking sandwich.

A sandwich and a salmon and a saddled sister swimming in from out of state. A seven and an eight and another round of trouble from the troubled twins and the conjoined faces. But how do they see? But how do the sea? But how!!

It isn’t obvious. It isn’t pretentious. It isn’t your business you lying piece of shit. How can you be so obtuse? Don’t you know that you are what you drive? Don’t you know that I never once asked to see who you are or where you live? Don’t you know that this depression is a killer? What do you know and where is it that you go? You don’t go down to Dixieland and I’ve never seen you at Disneyland. I doubt you’ve ever even been to Florida let alone driven there and back. Who are you, anyway? Why is your tongue split? Why do your fingernails curl backward? Why don’t you look like me? Why don’t you sound like me? Why can’t I smell your hair?

Go back to sleep. Go back to bed. Go back to where you belong. Go back. Go back. Go back.

—-

There was an open ended building with concrete floors where friends rolled toy trucks in my direction. The building faced a beach that was bookended on the right by scores of people. I was trying to ride over the train of trucks from nose to tail, but was on a bike whose gear was to big to turn over in a fast enough succession. I made it over, but it wasn't clean. We tried again. This time I went outside to get proper momentum. I pushed the bike to the right amid screaming beach goers on four wheel driven ATVs and my feet sunk in the wet sand. Side steps were made and shoes were muddied. Above me, people hung from parachutes and glided over the grass hills. With enough room to make a clean run, I started back. To my surprise and fully acknowledged content, the room was now empty and the trucks gone.

I joined a friend in an adjacent structure. A party was underway. A band had just gone on for its one song set and I was invited into yet another room. Here I was asked if I had any interested in getting away. I was asked if I was ready to start over. I replied, "I can start today." Things looked promising.

At this point, I shared some recent knowledge with my friend. They replied with some undisclosed insight as to me burning all the bridges I had once crossed by failing with my pen. I was perplexed.

Elderly people shuffled past and took their seats in what appeared now to be an industrial work space. Lights hung from long cords and tucked themselves into metal canisters. Long tables and simple metal stools filled the room. A video played on a screen where the band once was. I was confused, but certain. I woke up.

—-

In the break room there is an unusual silence that fills the air when it is only occupied by one. Occasionally there is the constant hum of some mechanical effort being put forth by a behind the scenes system, but mostly it's just silence. Once in a while the oddly pitched holler of another machine wails steadily as its top presses downward toward its bottom, but mostly it's just silence. Idle conversations and minor declarations perforate the doorway if it is left ajar, but mostly it's just silence. Crumbs and leftovers litter the table and one or two coffee pots rest quietly on the counter amid the dozens of dirty dishes. It's a break room after all. A place of seclusion and rest. A quiet corner of the busy world to sit and reflect and replenish and restore before heading back out into the chaos and splendor that is the holiday shopping season. The break room is so many things, but mostly it's just silence.

—-

On boats in cold water haggard men hoist sails for shores never seen at the edges of lands never crossed. Wrinkled hands and extinguished cigarettes draw the eyes to the hardened hearts of men lost at sea. Traveling for seasons without any true reasons these men know no homes and have long forgotten their loves abandoned and left for dead in the fireless chimneys of villages ruled by hatred and war. Adrift, these men are wandering the world in search of their oyster. If it shall ever be found is a concern that left them the first time the ocean came over the side rails and they struggled to cling to any sturdy and hopefully fixed object. Swept away from their minds and their liberated states, they simply go through the motions of their everyday lives.

Sleep.

Wake.

Eat.

Work.

Sleep.

Wake.

Eat.

Work.

Repeat.

Land will find you my friends. Land will find you. Whether under the sun or under the sea, you will touch the firm surface of this beautiful blue planet again. You will find your final resting place and all will be calm. Continue to raise your sails. Continue to follow the stars. Continue to set your course. Cold water, wind or otherwise, land will find you. It will.

—-

Coney Island afternoons and some photos for the Instagram. A long train ride and an even longer drive back to the Midwest. Flowers for the funeral and an escape hatch back to the cornfield. I took pictures of a random old man in a furry cap near a fishing reservoir because he was there and so was I. Before that, or just after there were photos of the blue bells and the red dress. I was such an artist then. On the inside anyway.

Fast forward and rewind and stop the tape. Stop the presses. Stop the stopping and the restarting and the crying and the tears. Stop in the tracks or on the tracks or along some abandoned railway in the far northeastern reaches of Wisconsin. Do you remember the lake? The vacated beach? The car trouble on the way to Alaska?

Can you remember that awful night in September? It never happened. It never took place and there was never a race and there was never a trophy and there cannot be a winner. There was no dinner. No rest stop. No casino. There was no gravel road to destiny and there was no lake shore in Ohio.

You made it all up. You made it all up and now you can’t remember the truth from the fiction. You’re lost somewhere in the library trying to find the elevator back to the beginning. Back to the place where the book starts and the characters are just introduced. You’re lost and there isn’t enough sage left in your pouch to clear the demons from your new place, let alone wash away those that are left in your last.

Buy the cast iron and the antique canister and stuff all your collectibles inside. Cut the sausage on the counter and snap a picture because it’s just to good not to share. Sit outside on the curb and catch the bus as it rolls by. There’s laundry around the back and it’ll be the last place you call home. Second floor, first door. Have some memories and try to sort yourself out. A couple of years from now you’ll be wondering why it was that you could never get comfortable there.

Life goes on and so does the band. Take yourself back to those empty rollercoasters and the Zoltar machine. You’ve never not been you, you’ve just been circling the drain that doesn’t exist except in your head. Go to bed. Go to sleep. Go and rest, my friend.

—-

Shirt

Shoes

Jacket

Pants

Dance

Hat

Cat

Fever

Wonder

Under

Over

Out

Again

Again

Again

Where does it end? Where does it begin? How many miles of this high desert sage wasteland must we walk before we find the end of the rainbow? Is there a rainbow? Doesn’t a rainbow need rain? I’m certain it certainly needs some kind of puddle or a lake or, at a minimum, some tiny stream of water flowing down from some higher point in the hills that likely stands in as some metaphor for the dreamers and the lonely hearts and the high school kids that find themselves wondering time and time again about what exactly it is that this life is going to bring after the comforts of the institution have escaped them. In that space long after the hallways are empty and the Friday nights are no longer filled with football games and warm beers at the home of that one whose parents have left town for the weekend.

Or.

Perhaps the answers to all of life’s question lie somewhere in or around that beat up old trailer that was parked by the river underneath that bluff? Perhaps there is some age old wisdom in the ignorance and misunderstanding of youth? I am not, however, convinced, at this middle age of mine, that there are answers to any questions about these matters. There certainly aren’t road maps or printed directions or instructors standing by the road ready to assist. There is no fancy watch that will tell us the turns by the each and no super internet phone that can guide by voice alone. Our paths are crisscrossed and check-marked and jumbled in their appearance. Or are they?

—-

A tortured soul and a deep sadness. A weekly repeat when the suns stays down. It’s real cold and real dark and it’s real hard. Some level of desire to just be left alone alongside some other want to be accompanied. Back and forth and inside out. Incense nonsense no sense. A smoke filled room and a tv on the ceiling. Drink more water. Argue with yourself.

What’s the difference.

There is none. Not one. Not one difference in this great big world. Go backwards. Find the roots. Dig them up. Store them in the cellar for the long winter. Can things. Salt the meats. You’re gonna be here for a while and when you finally get out you won’t even remember this because you come back here every year and every year it’s the same thing. Take your vitamins. Break the cycle. Look in the mirror you don’t have and smile at yourself and tell yourself that you have value and that you are appreciated and that you are loved.

—-

Four forty and the dog has moved onto the floor. With him there and myself in the space where I am, there is so much comfort in sleeping alone. In the hindsight and the foresight, lying in bed by my lonesome has pretty much been the case for the entirety of forty one years. When I think about it and whether or not it would be nice to have this not be the case I realize that this may, in fact, be a tough nut to crack.

Of course this is just an early morning observation and, as such, cannot stand to be included in the defendant’s testimony. There are rules here. Simple guidelines that are all plainly outlined in the handbook for use by those following along at home. It’s available through all the major channels, if you’re familiar with them? Smash it with a rock. Hit it with a hammer. Worst case scenario is that everything shorts out and flashes before the whole thing dies. Best case scenario is that it fires right up. Have a slice...everything is going to be fine.

—-

Analog evening in a storefront window. Visible breath through the cold pane window. Fried fish sandwich and a cool bottle of water that washes away the anxiety from not knowing everything instantly. An adult life otherwise tethered to the internet. An answer to any questions moments away and the touch of a screen.

Thankful. Grateful. Pause.

Change gears.

Crunching snow and an eviction notice. Out on the street the day before Thanksgiving. Thanks for giving, or is it thanks, forgetting? Shovels full of solid water and a warning determined to deter the masses and yet somehow the masses formed en masse to pollute the streets and sidewalks. A soup kitchen on Chicago and a few more steps to detox. Early morning afternoons leave tigers on the television, but you wouldn’t see it unless you were looking. Oh, and can you see the sky from here? Would it matter if you couldn’t? Isn’t there a basement with your name on it and some pillows left over from the trip out West. Cigars and scars and cigarettes and a sore spot from standing too long. The experience is the bottom line if we acknowledge it as such, but the line forms around the back! Unless of course you called ahead or ordered online or gave money to the last campaign. Whatever your position is there is likely a physician that’ll cut you open and take your money as long as you’ve declared your intent because those are the boundaries around this sandbox and if you don’t like it, or you can’t afford it, you can just kick rocks. Kick them on down the road and try to make your peace because there will come a time when you meet some maker and you’ll have to answer questions as to your whereabouts and why there aren’t any phone records.

My advice to you is to come back with a warrant.

—-

Fire and ash and a million miles that separate. A goal in mind to undo all the things that tied this knot in the first place. A fish place. A dentist’s office. A yoga studio on the third floor downtown. The river and all it’s movement. The banners on the wall on the way out. A smoked cigarette. A ball of twine and a piece of foil. Under the earth and across the interstate. Go there. See the sights and snap twenty-four pictures on the disposable. Send the whole thing in to get developed while you sit at home and regress. Throw all the pictures into an album and try to get it to play with that broken needle. Seven times around and you’ll still be tired. Tired and hopeless and wandering around like you’ve lost something you were never meant to find. This will be the beginning. The beginning and the end. This is the present and it’s neatly wrapped in cellophane and you’ll never find it because it was never hidden. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. It’s just simply something that cannot happen. It’s time. Time and money and a hot dog stand and some monk handing you some shiny token in exchange for your twenty dollar bill. Take it. Put it in your wallet that you wanted so bad. Put it in there and forget about it until you find it years later and it reminds you of all those things you did when you were younger. This will be your path. Make sure you shovel.

—-

He sent the kid out into the night with one of those old railroad style flashlights. The big kind with the giant lense that unscrews to reveal a battery the size of coffee can. I hadn’t seen this previously. As the kid walked away, the flashlight tumbled and turned into the darkness and there, from the balcony, the father emerged. He leaned over the railing and said, “Go straight to your grandfather’s. And don’t talk to nobody.” The kid replied, “I know. I won’t”, as he ambled down the icy sidewalk.

A pause in the darkness.

The father again belted our from the second floor, “I love you.” The kid returned with, “I know. I love you, too.”

—-

Missed communications. Miss communication. Lowside, bridge club and a small set of stairs. Turn the tv on. Unlock the locks and make damn sure your clear with whatever manner it might be that you set your fence posts. Make sure you dig the holes at forty inches or everything you’ve done will be undone when the frost climbs and claws its way back to the surface in the Spring.

Text, copy, handwriting. Words on paper or words on a screen. It doesn’t make much difference insofar as to how the letters are assembled or delivered if there isn’t a fundamental understanding as to the intention with which they were amassed. If one hand is signaling one thing and the other hand another, the receiver has no choice but to be confused. It’s mixed signals from the sun to the moon even though there is no more heartfelt kindness to be found in either the left or the right because they’re both too full to hold what they already have. Love and understanding and empathy.

Maybe it’s a train ride? Maybe it’s a separation of thought? Maybe there is no segue? Maybe the inside of that rail car has no walls and there is no way in and no way out? Maybe the old man in the deerskin coat shivering to stay warm by the dying fire has no more place in this world? Maybe the homeless aren’t homeless? Maybe our understanding of the understood is all wrong and backwards? Maybe the question is to not question? An entire paragraph?

Write another.

Set the pen down and go outside. Clean the yard and mow the lawn and put everything in it’s place. This is how the creativity is born. This is how things fall together and thoughts come pouring in. The creation is in the routine organization and the formality of finding homes for things. Especially when the homes for things are neat and tidy and separated by size and shape and color and alphabetized. Straighten up and fold the clothes and stuff them inside the duffel bag. Pick the pen back up and smash it.

—-

Holed up in a cabin near a lake in the deep woods on the North. A weeks worth of rations, a carton of cigarettes and enough coffee to fortify a month of mornings. Lock yourself in and write. Write all the words down and don’t come out until there are three hundred pages.

What would that even look like? Is it just the romance of the idea that captivates? Three hundred pages. A full book. Twists and turns and dead end streets. Walks in the woods with the dog as a stimulant for the mind. Couldn’t one just as well wrote the same thing in the confines of one’s own home? Why the need to escape? Make the date. Commit to the commitment. Just get out of your own way and make it happen. No circumstance is going to make it happen any faster?

Stop

Walk a mile in the shoes I have on and then you can come up to my desk and ask for the keys to my car. You have a lot of nerve asking for something that you never worked for and didn’t earn and you have no respect at all if you can’t even respond to the boundary. A simple fence was put in place and the posts and the rails very clear so as not to be disturbed and you can’t muster up enough common sense to respond with any kind of acknowledgement as to how you upended my peace of mind. There are a million miles of beach just waiting for you and your knuckle-dragged fists.

Bikes. They aren’t going to make you smarter, but they can take you to places where you can definitely learn.

—-

What’s the goddamn difference anyway? Every fucking day I wake up at exactly three-thirty. Every day. I open my eyes and I wonder what time it is and then I check and I see the same time every time. Some days I can fall back asleep. Other days, like today, I can’t. Instead I’m just wide awake and listening to the dog snore and wondering a million different things about my life and how it intersects with other people’s lives. This is how it goes and I don’t think it makes any difference at all

—-

A conversation about how power reveals a person’s true self. More words about influence and effect and how not all people that find themselves in a position of power end up being assholes.

I definitely had influence. The work I did leant itself to being adopted by the machine. I have no regrets. I do, however, find myself wondering how it was that what I did had such an impact while I was so lost as a human being. How was it that I could be an architect for an entire movement and not recognize myself in the mirror? How was it that I could live so passionately about one thing and, at the same time, be so absolutely insecure about myself and my place in the world? It’s a mystery to this day.

In hindsight, I think my ego had a major role. I think the fanfare and the accolades drove me. I believe that I had, at the time, a thirst for success and it isn’t that I don’t feel like being successful today, but rather I think my perception of what success is has changed. Today, for example, I believe success to simply mean happiness. If I am happy and content, I have succeeded. My younger self would disagree. My younger self would tell you that success was material. A house. A car. A bike. Influence. Power. All of those things meant so much because I was taught they meant so much and it wasn’t a hard lesson laid out by my parents and much as it was a soft lesson laid out by the world I grew up in. I grew up comparing things. Making observations and discerning differences. To have more things meant I was better than. This is part of the problem with our current culture. The lessons I learned as a kid and as a young adult are still being taught. It’s a thing. For certain.

Stuff does not define me. I am not the sum of my accomplishments. I have lived an incredibly privileged life and have had access to things that most do not. Undoing those privileges and unteaching those lessons is where you can find me these days. Loving myself for exactly as I am in this moment first and everyone else second.

It is never too late to wake up. It is never too late go lay down. Look in the mirror and if you don’t like what you see, do something about it.

—-

There is something agonizing and painful and lovely and encouraging about struggling through the perils of an average life without the escape that was once provided by a magical elixir. That is not to say that liquor actually solved any of my troubles, but it did provide an outlet that allowed me, if only for a moment, to forget about all that bothered me. To live without it, now for nearly twenty years, is to live alongside my demons as the manifest themselves in my every day being. At times they are silent and still. At others they are raucous and rambunctious. They are always there. Especially on Sundays during that long drive between there and here. They sit in the back seat. They whisper. They loom. They sit back there and they taunt me and they force me to live with them until the mundane existence of work reveals its patterned self on Monday. This is every week. Ninety minutes of memories and a soundtrack that would push most to pull into the nearest bar. Onward. Forward. Acknowledge the alcoholism for what it is and move on. Drinking isn’t going to solve anything and this has been made clear time and time again. Face the mirror and appreciate the reflection. Face the mirror and love the one who looks back. This tiny brain and all of its ability is wound to go back and forth between joy and misery and it’s just like every other tiny brain out there. Feel it. Turn the light down and feel and write and breathe and be. You are not unique. You are not special. The suffering you conceive it’s not unlike the suffering of others and your circumstance is not alone. Go until the end and whenever that day come make certain you’ve laid out your plans. Share them and be clear. Find those that fill your circle and make everything evident.

For example:

When I die you can drag my body into the hills just west of Borrego Springs. Drag me out there and leave under a pile of rocks because that is the first place I realized how amazing this life can really be. I’ve chased it ever since and when my time comes it seems only appropriate to return me to the place I found life. I don’t know when the day will come, but you can consider this my final wish. In writing.

—-

A frozen window and some street that abuts the train playground. A playground that, in the summer months, exists as some kind of memorial to a time when kids actually left the confines of their homes to play in some kind of poorly constructed neighborhood park. In the winter the place looks far more inviting and much less like a place one could contract some kind of disease by accidentally stepping on an abandoned hypodermic needle. Silently it just lives there. At the end of all of the presidents. Just south of the rail yard. Just north of the strangest portion of the oldest section of the city. The train playground.

To the east is the car lot where the human excrement lies quietly between the parked cars. The same car lot where the salespeople look just as one would expect them to.

To the south are houses. Lots of houses and parked cars and lights on in second story windows. People. Living out their lives in their low wage jobs making ends meet when they can. Middle America. Low-income. Realness. Solitude. Isolation. Here it is.

And in here it’s real quiet and the dog is lying on the bed and breathing loudly and another stick is about to get burned. There is routine here for the first time in ages. There is calm and collectedness. There is peace and comfort. There is here and here is there and everything is exactly as it should be.

—-

Day dreaming through a cemetery on 46th and absently wandering my way through midday traffic. A meeting in the Deep South and a trip to Alabama twenty years ago. Forget the man you used to be. Walk away from that identity. Business suits have no place in this present and Santa Claus probably won’t leave you anything under the tree. Scrabble. Babble. Circumcised. You are your father’s son and a baker’s wife if you can count to thirteen. Donuts and bottles of bourbon and a thousand sailors songs about coming home. Try to follow along and you’ll likely get lost because there is no rhyme or reason to the manner in which things fall to the page. Errors. Erroneous. Existentialism. A fraudulent newspaper and a dozen dried up Bic pens line empty shoe boxes left out for the mailman and a dog biscuit in case the neighbors get hungry. The giant box truck in the driveway replaces the rotted out RV, but it lacks the black lights and the ambiance of whatever college party you can remember the most. I can remember riding up and over Lyndale and through the woods near Cable. Sometimes I wonder if the mistakes I made are forgivable and if, in some strange world of make-believe, I’d ever get a second chance. I doubt it. I really doubt it, but if it happened I’d be sure to not screw it up...after all, the moose in the front yard was worth every second.

Remember? The second of November? I only know it as a calendar date and as a piece that rhymes. That’s twice I’ve used that word.

Forget. Forgive.

Live in the moment and stand over your feet. Undo your achievements and give more than you take. Squander not opportunities to become a better version of yourself

Reflect. Meditate. Burn that stick of incense because it’s routine and it calms you down and it reminds you that there is so much good in the world. Positive affirmations. Speak them. Incorporate the language into your everyday life and see the changes it affects. Smile. Compliment. Give.

Become your own brand and market it for good. You have the skillset of a leader, don’t piss that away on selfishness and ego.

Sleep.

—-

Christopher Crying in Columbus Circle

—-

Hiding in the corner of a dark room. A subway car filled with people. A basement shopping center and a French press made from ceramics. It’s red. It’s the same one your friend used to have. It elicits wonderful memories. Leave it behind. Along with the donuts. Travel. Go West. Dry out in the desert. Find yourself. Lose yourself. Almanzo. The words come naturally now. Bits and pieces from decades of living. What is a hero? What does that look like? Sit still. Time yourself. Track it. Wear the watch and count the heartbeats until the watch burns a hole in your arm and you realize that your heart has been cold. Warm it up. Read articles about self care. Make a tea. Brush your teeth. You still live out of duffle bags, but your shoes are neatly arranged on the floor and nobody can take that away from you. Every three weeks throw things away. Stay mobile. Don’t let the roots take hold. The black floor will swallow you up if you’re not paying attention. The stillness provides comfort and the cold air breathes fresh. Windows. Doors perspective. Remember when you were younger and there wasn’t a thing in the world that could set you back? Remember that feeling? Do you remember when it vanished? Forever? Is it really gone though? Perhaps it’s just a state of mind that could be manifested through the correct amount of time spent meditating? Try it. You might like it? You might find that somewhere between caring for yourself and riding your bike and spending time wandering different routes you might just see yourself in the reflection of the river and fully understand that there is only one you and that there has only ever been one you and that one you is beautiful and amazing and capable of caring and loving yourself and everyone around you? You might find that? Or you might find a five dollar bill on the ground and it might be the best thing that happens to you? It’s possible. Everything is. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way to see it.

—-

Song dogs in the hills that rise above the ocean. Music coming from the brush that lines the lookout. A cowboy hat on an escalator in the same house as Pollock. Translation. Transcontinent. Sing.

Wander on the top tube and bring the whole goddamn thing with. Write on the inside of cards and hand them out at the holidays and then wonder why everyone has strange side eyes. Bake cookies with judgement and make sure to turn the oven off because, after all, a broken ice machine never makes ice unless it’s sitting outside.

Call the police. Call security. Find discomfort in being uncomfortable. Live and let live, unless of course those that are being left to live are unlikely to and, while we’re at it, is it you’re place to interrupt anyway? Perhaps they’re hoping to die? Either way you’re going to have to check in to see if everyone is on the bus. Hopefully they are and hopefully they’ve found their seat and they’ve managed to store their foam cooler right in the way of the bathroom door so that every time somebody has to use that tiny little space it’ll be somebody’s job to move the cooler because that’s thinking ahead and it’s definitely thinking of others. It’ll be fine. Everything is fine. Everything is always fine. At least until it isn’t and by then it doesn’t matter and it never did and it never will and that’s just the way things go as long as things are going. Because they do, you know? They go. The things. They go and they go and they go. They go like a clock that ticks with broken parts, and somehow, on this clock, the expectation hand always seems to move faster than the our.

—-

I vividly remember wondering why it was there, but I cannot recall my motivation for sinking so much money into it. I once found a slot machine in the middle of a National Forest. I dropped forty-five quarters through the slot and I never once hit a BAR. My pockets were so heavy walking in that my stride was off. The dog never wandered into the brush, but I think that’s because I had treats. Bacon. When I threw a stone it rippled the water on the pond just beyond the opening and I could tell that no one had been here in years. There was no electricity and no running water in these parts. I left my truck running on the side of the road as I was compelled to just get out and go.

Out of order stories are difficult to read, but fascinating to write. An exercise in what I hope will be a productive journey into the one project I have longed to complete…a book written in seclusion. Finally.

—-

There is a lot at stake here and if something isn’t done about it right now everything is going to fall apart. Accept it. Make peace with it. Take the jacket off and stay. Reach out if that’s what you feel moved to do. Fill out the form. Lick the stamp. Drop the envelope into the box and cross your fingers.

There’s fog above the river and the snow banks are high enough to keep the deer in the woods. Appropriate the appropriate and leave the rest behind. Frozen ankles and wood lined walls. Climb. Climb. Climb.

Unrelated. I would like a house. A little house with a centralized kitchen and some windows that look out onto trees. A small room for sleeping just a ladder away. A desk for writing and a place to finally complete the longest essay.

That’s all. A simple list. A wood burning stove and a stack of split wood out back. A sleeping dog and a past that is fun to look back at. Go forward.

—-

Abandoned. Stranded. Old. Irrelevant. Lost in the change. Floundering in the two way traffic of time. Where? What? Why would it matter? Go home to nothing because home doesn’t exist. The holidays. The responsibilities. The fatigue. The bags under the eyes. The stress. The heartburn. Age. Fragility. Relationships. Time.

Nothing matters.

We all race toward death.

Sadly there is no winner. Conversely, there is no loser. Instead we all just end up running out of time and likely lying there replaying the moments of our lives where we had pleasure and likely contemplating how one thing might have been different had we chosen a different path. That’s regret. Unavoidable. Comparison. Try to do it different and you’ll end up in the same place. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. We covered that earlier.

For a moment you’ll have everything in your hand. In the next you’ll feel rejection and look at yourself in the mirror and wonder what it was that got you here in the first place. You’ll vomit. You’ll get up. You’ll put on a face. You’ll smile. You’ll convince yourself that everything is wonderful and remind yourself to remind yourself and you’ll go about this for a while until you get tired and then you’ll remember that everything is not fine and everything is not wonderful and you’ll watch your friends get drunk and make decisions that baffle you and you’ll wonder why you don’t join them only to remember that every time you do that you hate yourself more than you already do and you’ll remember that if you put yourself in a position where you hate yourself more than you already do you’ll probably kill yourself and that killing yourself would be disrespectful to the people that care about you so you stop thinking about that and put your pen down.

You put your pen down.

—-

You wanna walk out into the woods and settle this shit like a couple of 19th century boxers? Drop gloves as they say in the hockey arenas? For what? To solve the riddle of time and agony? Do you think it matters? Any of it? Our pangs and our trials and our tribulations? Myths. All myths. Everything we aspire to be in the name of bettering ourselves and those around us is perpetually influenced by the propaganda machine. The man. The king of the sheep. The master of billboards and the grocery store champion. We owe ourselves to their reign. Their rain. Their oh so acidic rain. Their apocalyptic barrage of nonsense and misdirection. Their crown of hate and misogyny. We owe ourselves to their capitalism and their greed and their abundance and reluctance to share. They are our leaders. They hold our leash. They command our attention and keep us locked to their tits. They give us only enough rope to not hang ourselves and you want to bark at me about some small disruption in our wavelength?

—-

From where I’m sitting I can count bottles and towels and little square napkins and I can hear the sound of the scoop as it slides into the ice bin. I can feel the pressure of the ticket printer and I can recall every nuance that follows along through a bartender’s night. Thirteen years I spent behind the wood. Thirteen. For so long I considered myself a professional. I knew the drink lists front to back and I had a short list of drinks that had my very own special twist. It was an honorable vocation. A trusted spot in so many people’s lives. The bartender is your friend and your lover and your confidant. The bartender is so many things to so many people. The bartender is everything and their wage is based solely on one’s ability to scrape together more money than the total of their bill and pass it along. Gratuity. It’s nonsense and so widely accepted that’s its vomit inducing. Servers are servants and that is how our culture looks at it. It might not be the most popular word to describe the situation, but it’s the truth. A long time ago, when I was still painting regularly, I created a series of sixteen panels. Each of the panels was washed in white paint and each had hand written on it, in black paint, the words “income based gratuity scale”. Think about it. The more you make, the more you tip. It’s seems logical and simple. It’ll never happen. 

—-

A monument. A moment. A monumental moment. A catastrophe in a catastrophic cacophony of welled up emotions and hurt feelings and a million years of evolution all wrapped up in a burrito of cheese and chorizo and some bubbly water. I have no idea. Not a single thought on the matter or the manner or the makeup of any particular organism or how it grew into being some other life form. I have no idea how time exists in one space and somehow manages to show up completely different in another. I have no idea about ideas or thought processes or food processors. I have no idea about long walks before Christmas to a house full of strangers and the pictures I may or may have not taken along the way. I have no idea about the music that pours into the air from just behind my head. I have an empty brain and the only thing that’ll come out are these words and I’m trying like hell to put them in order so that someday when I’m old I can look back on these and kind of remember what it was that I was thinking. It’s a record. A snapshot of time. A picture in an album. A painting of a painting and an explanation of dreams about people bound in rope riding horses along some deadly ridge far away from anybody. It’s the painting next to my bed. It’s the one piece of yesterday that looms like a wall over me when I sleep.

Or is it?

Perhaps it’s just some happening of happenstance or a circumnavigation of circumstance? Perhaps it is perhaps. Per haps. Per caps. Per. Purr. Fur. Collar. Hollar. Yell and scream except I can never understand why the volume has to be so loud when it’s clear that the only people talking are standing right next to each other on the steps outside the hotel. On those steps above the path and adjacent to the road. That’s where they scream and throw punches and wait for someone to come and tell them to leave. That’s how they do it there in the city. That’s how it unfolds when the weather permits and when it doesn’t they wander in with their toil and they spend too long in the bathroom and they mutter odd things at the counter and they leave behind their belongings and they pass out and they piss on the floor. They do that because they can’t do it another way. They do it because it’s how life is for them in that moment. It’s monumental, their moment. It’s the life they have in their present and I doubt very much that it is anything they would have ever chosen had they been given the choice or the option or the long straw or the low card or whatever other method had been presented to them to pick out their future. Instead, they ended up here. On these steps over this path. Screaming and yelling and fighting. They ended up here by making choices in the their moments. They ended up here because so many other places wouldn’t take them. They ended up here. Under these bridges and in these bushes. Drinking and drugging and sleeping and stealing and passing out. They ended up here and somehow managed to get cast away from the comforts of everything else everyone else knows as comforts. They ended up here, on our steps looking for some kind of love or kindness or empathy or generosity. They ended up here never knowing what kind rejection faces them next. They ended up here with the doubts that shadow their every move. They ended up here and all we can do is smash our heads together and figure out how we’re going to get rid of them. That’s our best solution. Solve the problem by forcing it out or replacing it with other people that get along more like we do. We came up with that instead of speaking kindly to everyone and making allowances in our own comfort to help comfort those that aren’t comfortable. We came up with that big master plan to plant trees and install fences to protect our magical space from the wretches of our scene. We came up with it. We hatched our plan. We declared our moment as a testament to our monument. We wrote down our solution to the catastrophe and we put it up on the signs we jammed down deep into the earth.

We are here. So is everyone else.j

—-

There are a million things to get upset about in just about every aspect of every human life. It’s the unfortunate byproduct of how we’ve culturally conditioned ourselves and our perspective. This is just a simple fact.

For the last 41 years I have spent the better part of my time examining how I interact with myself, how I interact with others, how others interact with myself and how others interact with others. It’s just how I’m wired. 

In recent times, I have had the pleasure (and the curse) of being a witness to all of these interactions and the way they unfold themselves in what seems very much to be real time on the internet, specifically on the varying versions of social media platforms. 

Having said that, I will say, respectively and without a shadow of a doubt, that as our interactions currently exist we are an abysmal, disconnected version of ourselves. 

Just this morning, as I was scrolling through the masses of posts on Facebook, I stumbled upon what seemed to be a rather important message from somebody I know in Oklahoma. The message outlined some changes this person had recently made to a bicycle event that they host. As a one-time promoter of a similar event, my curiosity was stimulated. I dove in. 

The article itself was very well written and outlined clearly the key components of any good first-hand account. That is to say, what things were like, what happened and what things are like now. 

Good enough...and then the comments.

Once I got to the comments section I concretely found myself looking at what I believe is currently our worst selves getting worse. 

It is tragic.

Some may remember (most likely don’t or have no idea at all) that I went through something terrible in the way of social media comments earlier this year. The cause for my experience was rooted in systemic, disconnected privilege. The cause for today’s unraveling of humanity is no different. 

The main takeaway, for me at least, is that words matter and they matter a ton. What we say has value and can impact people far beyond what we think our reach might be. More important than our words, however, are our actions that follow and while I will be the first to admit that I have made mistakes along my journey, what we do in the wake of what we say is paramount to all else.

With that, I challenge you. I challenge you to examine your words and examine your actions. Does the language you use connect and unite people? Do your actions build inclusive communities and strengthen bonds? Or, are the things you say and do dividing and excluding people, either present or past? 

We are nothing but the sum of our experiences and as such, it is imperative that we keep one of each of our senses on the past and the others right here in the present. 

I hope, with all of my faculties, that something I’ve written here resonates with you and I encourage you to share this message. We are more divided today as humans than we have ever been in our history. 

Connect, encourage and include. This is our time and this is our responsibility. 

—-

I cannot, for the life of me, remember how long ago it was that I heard Jeff Tweedy say something in an interview about how making music and then giving it away to the public to listen to automatically ends the creators period of ownership. It stuck with me. For years. It stuck with me and I thought that I very much adhered to the concept. I thought, for so long, that I fully embraced the “what you give away is what you get in return” mentality. I thought did, but I didn’t.

For years I have walked around this earth with something sharp stuck in my side or my neck or my back. This thing, this sword or this knife or this spoon has plagued me and kept me up at night and prevented me from being my best self and has sent me to the far edges of the country looking for peace. Miles and miles and miles I have walked and ridden and driven trying to chase down whatever caused this pain. I wandered and wandered and wandered and I looked and I looked and I looked. I tried everything to make it stop. I even looked inside...or at least I thought I did. 

Twenty years ago I made a decision to set my life on an alternate path. As a result, I studied scores of books and bounced thousands of ideas off of all kinds of folks and what I learned was that my ego was the default source to most of my troubles. I learned this and I took it to heart. Additionally, I discovered that, because I had spent so many years taking from others to make myself look and feel good to myself, the best way to make this right was to give back to the community I had taken so much from. It was a simple ask; give freely of myself without intention to receive anything in return. I was promised that I would get everything back tenfold. That promise held up. 

What I find most interesting about all of this is that around the same time that this life path was changing, I was circling back to enjoying bicycles again while living headlong in a creative space that had me painting and making things.

Like any good student, I set about to do the work immediately. 

For a couple of years I did the work and I gave freely of myself to others benefit. I did it and I kept studying and I kept bouncing ideas off of the people I was learning from...and then one day I stopped. I stopped studying and I stopped sharing ideas. I stopped because I felt like the work I was doing to give back was the whole reason I ever needed a change in the first place. I felt like I had concluded my studies and that my life’s purpose was fulfilled. 

I went this way for almost a decade. On my own in the world and doing what I thought was the best I could for the people I had taken so much from years before. As I sit here in this early morning hour I could not have been further from the truth. 

When I decided to leave Almanzo after the event in 2014 I felt a giant hole grow inside me. It was a massive vacancy and I had no idea why it was there or how I would fill it. I knew that I was done with the event, but I also I had no idea what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to keep giving of myself because I had wandered so far off from the crowd that got me where I was. I lost track of myself and I had reverted to my old standby...my ego.

You see, I didn’t start Almanzo because I thought my ideas were grand. I started it because I wanted people to be able to enjoy what I’ve enjoyed by bicycle and I wanted it to create a space where people could feel equal. I wanted to make something that felt just like the atmosphere that I had spent so much time in learning and studying and bouncing ideas off of people. I wanted that and I made that and, for all intents and purposes, it was incredible. In all those years I saw so many people accomplish things they never thought they could. I saw unity and camaraderie. I saw strength in individuals and I saw strength in community. I saw a spirit that I had never known. I saw humans being humans and it was beautiful and inspiring. 

I poured everything I had into that event. Everything. 

I put it ahead of everything else in my life. I put it ahead of my family and my friends. I put it ahead of money and my own well being. I put it at the top of my list of things to give because I knew that if I did that, I couldn’t be doing anything wrong. It was like a protective shield and as long as I wore it I didn’t have to study and I didn’t have to bounce ideas off people because the feedback I was getting from people was that everything I touched was incredible. 

And then it stopped. I stopped. I walked away. I walked away because after the huge numbers of participants in 2012 I knew there was something wrong with my approach. I knew that taking bikes from manufacturers and money from retailers was wrong. I knew that being praised was wrong. I knew that it was wrong of me to take these things because that kind of benefit was perpendicular to the reasons I started this whole thing. In 2013 I tried to backpedal my efforts and by the end of the event in 2014 I knew I needed to leave...so I did.

I left the event that year and spent the next five years trying to figure out what was missing. I got divorced. I walked almost all the way away from bikes. I moved across the country. I changed my appearance online. I ran. I hid. I got angry with myself and I created a narrative to protect myself. I created a protective shield that I thought would buy me enough time to figure out what my problem was. I crafted a story that I told myself and it worked...until it didn’t. You see, I walked away from Almanzo because my ego got in the way and I knew it, but that didn’t prompt me to do anything about it. Instead it just gave me more free time to work around it. For five years I told myself that nobody really understood me or my efforts. For five years I quietly admonished the gravel road community because they never adhered to my defining principal of no entry fees. That is bullshit. That is my bullshit.  That is my bullshit ego.

Back to the Jeff Tweedy interview. If I make something and I send it out into the world, it’s no longer mine; it becomes property of the state. That was Almanzo. I made it and I gave it away and I have zero regrets about that. What I look backwards on with some shame and guilt is the way that I felt some sense of ownership after I had released it. I let my ego make decisions for me and it kept me from seeing everything that is beautiful about what has grown up around gravel cycling. Today I can say that Almanzo was never about one thing or another. It wasn’t all about free entry and it wasn’t about gravel roads and it wasn’t about bringing life to small, rural communities. It was about giving freely of myself to the people around me without the intent of getting anything in return. It was about abandoning ego and building a space where people could come and connect with each other and find something in themselves that gave them the courage or the motivation to do something bigger with their abilities. It was about all of that and the truth is that all of that still exists in the hundreds of gravel events across the country and across the planet. 

I didn’t create gravel and I didn’t create bikes. I didn’t father any kind of bicycle subcategory and I certainly make no claims to have done so. What I did do was make a real hard push to make gravel cycling a thing and I pushed to empower people to make their own events and do what I did. I taught what I had learned and I received the ideas that were bounced off me and gave feedback accordingly. I became the teacher until I could no longer teach. 

To all of the people that I silently held grudges against for the last five years, I am sorry. You never did anything wrong. Instead, it was me who was wrong to harbor such feelings. It was me who was wrong to put my ego ahead of the well being of others. It was me who was wrong to put my own self-interest in a position to be dependent on your efforts in what I thought should be my likeness. I made mistakes and I took things for granted. I took advantage of people’s kindheartedness and all the while it was all of you who were out there carrying the message that bikes change lives. You were the ones carrying the torch and doing the work and I was the one sulking in my own depression and remorse and for my behavior and for that I am sorry. 

I cannot change the past, nor would I want to. Today, on this final day of 2019, I can write this letter and let everyone know that my love for bicycles has done nothing but get stronger. I can let you know that I have returned to studying. I can let you know that I am finally at peace with myself and my surroundings. I can let you know that I finally understand what it means to love myself for exactly who I am. I can let you know that I understand appreciation as a two way street. I can let you know that I understand the value of self as self relates to others. I can let you know that I understand my ego and what it’s capable of and why it is oh so important to keep it in check. 

Most of all I can let you know that I am full again. I am full again and I am very excited to tell you that I cannot wait to see you at some events this year. I will be there riding and smiling and I hope we meet...again or for the first time. 

—-

Marketing marketing marketing marketing. We speak to each other in pictures and we name drop the brands we like because we think it will bring us some kind of good deal on the next purchase. We do the work of the hand that feeds us and we don’t ask questions. 

—-

Ego and lies and expectations run rampant is this beautiful culture of ours. The purpose is to sell out. Sell out and earn more because more money and more stuff equates to more relaxation and more vacation time and more affection. Look at me!!! I am important!!! Why doesn’t anyone understand?

—-

There is a saying in the world about walking a mile in another’s man’s shoes. It references prematurely passing judgement.

Shoes. We all wear them. 

Sometimes, when the situation presents itself, one can loan their shoes to another and perhaps whatever journey the other is on can be made a little easier. 

That is to say, “Here, try these on, they’ve already walked a good portion of what lies ahead of you; they know the way.”

—-

Sitting on the curb with the trash and taking every piece of pent up energy from the last ten years like a toll booth attendant at the Holland tunnel takes change. Trash. Waste. Time. 

You weren’t there. You weren’t. You can’t contest that and nobody is expecting you to. It isn’t a thing and you know it, but you do know that no journey begins without the first step and you took that this week and nobody is going to take that from you. Show up. Keep showing up. Things will change.

—STOP—

Soup for dinner and a cough that appeared out of nowhere. Plans for the weekend and an invitation. Do something. Anything. Do what you will because it’s nighttime now and that’s when the rest comes if it ever comes so just wait for it until you fall asleep. Maybe. 

You’ll write more, just not today. Today isn’t the one. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Some day.

—-

Checked my pulse and did pushups until my arms fell off in some vain attempt to maintain a level of fitness that has been pressed onto me by the magazines and the machine that owns my soul. Drank whiskey because the burn felt better than facing the fears in my life that only exist because my ego is too big to hide in this suitcase. Hid from my hiding spot when the sun went down.

Sorrow. Borrow. Tomorrow.

Don’t you know me? Haven’t you seen the sights named after me? Haven’t you secretly snapped your selfie with my likeness in the background?

Once a loser, always a loser. Shots fired...from a seventeen year old gun. Rust on the bullets. Dust in the chamber. What kind of person hangs onto that kind of anger for so long? What kind of person feels the need to cleanse their soul at the expense of another? You know. You know damn well and you know your tree lost all its leaves when you lied and when you left and there’s no chance they’ll regrow. That’s life. That’s how things unfold in real time. Everything ends. Even your ignorance. 

—-

Sunday on the snow and ice and nobody cares where you’ve gone or what you’re up to and that’s the best feeling in the world. Get out there. Ride across the lake and don’t ask questions. Pedal. Forward. Never look back. Cut your losses and push your heart into the place where it’s about to explode and then keep going because the other end of this thing is going to be so much better than where you started from. Jump in. All in. There is only one life and one trip from birth to death and if the smiles aren’t there they simply aren’t there. 

Return to sender. Undelivered. What happens while you’re gone is irrelevant. Don’t ask. Keep moving because this band sucks and they’re not going to get better, but they try hard and they showed up which is more than can be said for a handful of others, but it’s twelve months later and the whole world has changed. It’s Sunday. All day. Unless it rains, but we all know that isn’t going to happen because it’s only fifteen degrees in this event center on the edge of the ice. 

Pound sand or crush gravel or crunch snow or kick rocks. It’s all the same when it’s swimming around in your stomach. 

—-

Full plates and a kitchen staff that moves in a million directions. The best dishes are usually not on the menu. Talking out of both sides of the mouth is the fastest way to end up silent. Cake. Pizza. A coffee to go. The best advise I ever got was when it’s done it’s done and the phone doesn’t ring anymore. I didn’t know exactly what that meant when I heard it twenty years ago, but as the saying goes had I known then what I know now. Truth. Say it. Live it. Two lines. An out and back. Washed up. Wash burned. A cabin on a lake. A stone fireplace. More beer cans than I’m comfortable with. I miss my friend and it’s dark and I have heartburn. Or is it heartache? Or is it the memory of depression? I’m not upset or mad or disappointed. I am accepting and I have a full heart. I understand and I also have boundaries. I have a fence with a gate around this beautiful house of mine in these beautiful woods along this beautiful river. All the way up here. All the way out here. Out here in no man’s land. Out here and over there and don’t bother calling again because the phone lines are down and the postman lost the address. Send it by pigeon from a rooftop in New York. Send it via telegram. Send it to somebody else because the gate doesn’t open and the mailbox just got emptied. Twenty years. Ten years. A handful and a shakers worth and we’re all racing to the same place. Go home, you’re drunk. Feeble. Fable. Stable. A bunch of horses running loose on the eastern plains. I’ll call it. For good. There’s a lot going on and I can tell it’s too much. Don’t bother coming back because nobody lives here anymore. They’ve all gone off to join the circus.

—-

Time and space and imagination and a bunch of circles colliding into each other to create Venn Diagrams. This is how we live. Every day. We are simply circles bumping into each other and sharing an intersection for a moment or several. What’s odd is that, sometimes, even when we aren’t directly in contact with another and their circle, we still overlap. It’s stunning really. Intersecting with another human being even though they cannot be seen or touched. Our minds are incredible in their capacity to leave the present and wander off into the past or the future. It’s a lot.

For the last several weeks I have been focusing on the concept mentioned above. As such, I too have not been fully present to my surroundings. I’m not certain it’s even possible to be fully present one-hundred percent of the time, but, alas, it is an excellent goal.

I digress. Venn Diagrams. Our intersecting points as humans. What does it mean? What is the value in this analysis?

I have surmised the following:

I am one person. In being this one person, I occupy only the space above my feet. For the sake of keeping things simple, I have decided to view the space above my feet as a perfect circle that I constantly occupy. This circle, this space above my soles, is everything about me. It is my feelings. It is my touch and my scent and my audio and my taste and my sight. It is my emotions and my memories. It is everything that makes me who I am as a human. Like me, everyone else has a circle underneath them and their circle’s represent who they are.

When I interact with another, be it by sight or by sound or by touch or by scent, according to this visual way of understanding, my circle is intersecting with their circle. Where our circles overlap is key.

Imagine it this way. I have this circle underneath me that represents me and I am the sole responsible party for what the contents of that circle are. I get to decide what clothes I wear and what words I use. I get to decide how I smell and how I feel things when I touch them. I get to decide who I like and who I dislike. I get to decide who I love and who I do not love. I get to decide everything that registers as a thought in my brain. This is my reality. Everyone else gets the same with their circle.

When I find myself overlapping my circle with that of another, be it seated next to a stranger on a bus ride, or deep in a conversation with a loved one, the contents of my circle are mingling with the contents of their circle. How these contents interact it super important, but without mindfulness as to the overlap, things can get real weird, real fast. For example, I may not know anything about the other person and as a result, I may say something that is common place and comfortable to me, but that very same thing may resonate poorly with them. Because our circles are overlapping, where they intersect is no longer one-hundred percent mine. This overlap becomes a shared space. It’s not any different than having a fence around one’s property and leaving the gate open. With unabated access to this shared space, we don’t get to control what comes in and we should be prepared for anything. This can be scary. A ray of hope exists though because we do get to control, one-hundred percent of the time what we contribute to this shared space. If we want to say kind things, we get to do that. If we want to make positive contributions to the others circle, we get to do that. Conversely, if we want to be rude or spiteful or mean, we get to do that do. These intersecting spaces is where our humanity happens.

So…circles. They’re a thing. At least to me. What’s more about these circles is the way my mind occupies itself around the circles that I cannot see or touch. My mind, in all of its incredible wonder, somehow manages to find a way to intersect with folks that aren’t even close. On the surface it doesn’t sound like much. It actually seems pretty normal to think about the people I care about when I am not around them. This is all fine and good, but what about when my mind wanders to somebody that I do not care much about? What about when my mind occupies itself with someone that has wronged me or negatively interrupted my life in some way? What does this exertion of energy do for my emotional health? How does this pattern of thought remove me from the present and launch me into the past or the future? Does any of it even matter?

Yes. The answer, to me, is yes.

When I am fully present to my circle and to the circle’s of others as they are physically in my life, they are getting one-hundred percent of my attention. When I am thinking about someone or something else, my attention is diverted from what is happening in the immediate physical space around me and I am giving less than one-hundred percent. As I think about the people that I often see and genuinely care about, it troubles me to think that I may be giving them less than all of my attention. It pains me to think that I might be inconsiderate to their needs and their desire to overlap my circle because I am thinking about something or someone else. The Venn Diagram visual is a helpful tool for acknowledging myself in these situations.

All of this might sound jumbled and disorganized. It is entirely possible that it is. After all, these are just words being dumped onto a page. To me, though, this makes a ton of sense and it has helped me be more specific when I address and interact with others. Adopting this view of myself and myself as I interact with others has improved my mood and left me happy in places and times when I have previously been depressed and/or disappointed. It has allowed me the space to feel like I am in complete control of my life. It has empowered me to believe in my choices and my words and my actions. It has created a space for me to use the aforementioned as tools to foster kindness and build strong, healthy relationships with the people around me and while I realize that this method may not be for everyone, I am curious to pursue it more and discuss it at every opportunity that presents itself.

—-

Disconnection. Reconnection. No connection. No understanding. No standing under. No nothing. Off the front with no one to ask questions of. The future is present in the past and a million decisions later the phone rings and it’s her. So angry. So justifiably angry. Onward. Show up. Bring consistency and play the long game. No anger. No hate. Radiate positivity. You’ll be in your grave soon enough. Enjoy the time.

—-

I took the only seat in the house to hammer away on these keys in the hopes that I would string together some strain of sentences that resemble some forgotten sentiment, some pathway to the long compacted sediment under which my heart is buried. The poets and the songwriters seem to sum things up so well that my vain attempts at compiling letters into words and sentences and paragraphs seems like a road to nowhere littered with boarded up convenience stores. No fuel for the drive. No snacks for the car. Just an empty road that leads to nowhere. And don’t bother punching the clock because this work trip to the woods is on your honor and it won’t matter anyway because they’ll deliver the remainder of your meager earnings to the funeral home to help pay for your service. Just like they’ll do for all the poor souls that sold themselves to the company store. The work. The toil. The unending hours in the cave with the tiny yellow canary in the cage that just won’t stop singing that song about how you should have left years ago. Remember that? Remember the song? In the cave? In that dark, dark space where there was dancing and laughter and so much enjoyment that two people should have had to pay admission to see the seven shows? Drive. Get in the car and drive. Write the letter and mail it. Write the letter and burn it. Write the letters into words and send them all the way to space and back. It’ll change your life. It will. It will change it because you’re a good egg and you’ll end up right where your supposed to be and there isn’t anything that’s going to stand in the way of that because that’s how the universe works. It works out for everyone and nobody leaves before they're supposed to because if they did everything would be disrupted and nobody would have to go to work anymore because there wouldn’t be jobs and there wouldn’t be money and everything we know would be gone because somebody left before they were supposed to. It’s a chain of events. It’s dominos. It’s one foot over the other until it isn’t. Sentences. Paragraphs. Run-ons. 

—-

To Whomever Might Read This:

I hope today is filled with amazing for you. I hope, when you wake, that you are smothered by feelings of awe and wonder. I hope your smile is contagious and that all those around leave wondering how you can be so happy. I hope there is someone in your life that lets you know that you are loved and appreciated and valued. I hope today is the best day and that tomorrow is better. You got this!

Love, Chris

—-

It’s Leap Day. The extra day. The plus one. The add-on. The day that counts, but doesn’t count unless it’s your birthday. It’s also Saturday. All day.

RADIATE POSITIVITY

Send out what you want to get in return and it will likely happen. The world is your oyster. Your mind is your biggest enemy. Follow your heart and trust your gut.

RADIATE KINDNESS

—-

Coffee, clay and gingerbread houses. Ninety miles in one direction and the music from twenty years ago. Instructions on properly drying clay. Golf bags. That’s where the money is.

Nothing matters and the internet will lie to you.

Social media is for envy.

Acts of kindness will resolve your dilemma every time. Be love. Feel love. Open doors and an open heart. It’s not surgery. It’s not science. Get exercise. Be nice. Write letters and communicate. Holding things in to figure them out is the fast track to depression.

—-

Exhausted. Drained. Empty. Yet full. 

The byproducts brought forth by the uncovering of a hornets nest have revealed themselves in ways that I have not previously experienced. It is as intense as it is relaxing. It is profound and deep and shallow and simple. It is conversation and extension. It is listening and hearing. It is taking every blow with grace and dignity while remaining steadfast in my own integrity. It is showing up when I’m tired. It is showing up when I feel like running. It’s riding the bike and doing the pushups and taking time to take care of myself. It is everything and nothing. Byproducts. Hornets. Bees. Winged beasts that are as much a part of nature as the sun rising and setting. Are they beasts? Is the hornet sting not just a reminder that we feel? Sure, there are allergies and an occasional death, but by and large the sting of the hornet is remedied by time...just like everything else in this world. Time heals. Let it pass. Participate in it. Jump headlong into the wind and see where it takes you. Adventure. Life. A change of course. A chance meeting at a bar. An opportunity to be seized. Relish in it. Grab it by the horns. This life. The only one we get. 

—-

Anchors away and a parking spot across the street from some place called Mary Ellen’s. Fish bowls and fish and chips and the sound of a dozen dishes crashing. Check the phone and watch out for the internet because it’ll get you every time. Send that letter to Arizona. Beached whales and broken sawhorses and a million Indians displaced by white people hungry for free land and their very own chance at liberty. What unbelievable level of fucked up happened here in the 1800’s? What kind of lawlessness promoted the killing of human beings in the name of growth? It still happens. It happens today. Death in the name of progress. Sadly, today, our lawlessness is tied up in our laws and our monies and our government and our marketing. Our death is slow and agonizing and painful and isolated because our kids don’t have time and they put us in nursing homes because it’s easier than caring for our elderly selves. It’s bananas and bonkers and catchy words that used to mean something until time happened and the tattoos stopped and the timer went off and things were not respected. The boundaries. The fences. The happiness set aside for the joy. Round and round. Up and down. Inside out. Over and under and a lawnmower parked on blocks because the wheels stopped wheeling when the deck hit the rocks in the front yard. Rope tricks and horse wranglers and cowboys. Frightened. Strings of thought. Consciousness confused for conscientiousness. Corduroy jackets and a monkey on the pocket. Wear the hat. Wear all the hats. Stop. Be nice. Channel the energy into positivity and make somebody smile. Do it. Ask for nothing and get everything. I love you.

—-

I create a separation between myself and the other person as a way of detaching myself because I sense the beginning of pain. That is to say, I pull back from relationships because I have experienced pain in relationships. It’s a wall I build to protect myself. 

It’s something I have experienced over and over and over and until I am willing to leave myself unprotected by the wall, I will never feel true and genuine love. 

I cannot say that this is true for all, but, by my experience, I think it’s close to being accurate for many.

Making plans is nice. Having regular feedback regarding interest and attraction is nice. Being told I am wanted is nice, but when these things don’t happen, I have a reason to throw more bricks up and when I throw more bricks up, I feel comfortable because I am in control and when I am in control, I can avoid pain.

Sadly, when I am so determined to avoid pain, I also avoid love and care and kindness. 

My goal today is to not throw any bricks at my wall and be open to the love and care and kindness of others in my circle.

Just thoughts.

—-

Mind meld. Transition time. So many roads and so much energy dispersed into the ether that it’s either in or out or both at the same time and a thousand ones and zeros. Dance. There’s tobacco in the air and the man at the ferry wants guns and furs for passage. Sunlight. Sun kissed. Sunken ships and rocks at the bottom of the ocean. Four years ago the dog came home and mom was born and life was altered forever. Forever forward. Up and at em. Flyby. Firefly. Peaked interest is interested. A whole thirty. Tattoos on the arm and chest and when the sun comes out the sun comes out. Fierce. Intense. Clipped nails. Stream of consciousness. Stream of water. Stream of dreams. Field of dreams. Baseball season and the saggy sidi’s. Mud season. Mud hens and laughing hyenas and some nature film about animals in Africa. The West. The greatest. The one and only and another one that is also the only, but can there be only two onlys and only one at the same time? The same Tim. The same Tim and his brother Tim and their uncle Tim had time to go to the festival of Tim’s, but they left without their shared father and his father and their alcoholism. They left for the party before the party started and they got their after it finished. The Tim and Tom and Doug. The space ship on the rug. The earthly beings that circle the wagons and prepare for the rapture. The red sneakers and the tin foil hats and the media man tell us to calm down as they pump fear into our veins. Like a heroin addict we just take it and nod off.

—-

Love ferociously. It kills doubt and keeps the walls down

—-

“Right now in this moment is the only moment”, said the white robed man as he loaded spoiled food into the back of an unmarked van. It was snowing and cold that night on 72nd Street and the words that were heard couldn’t have been closer to the truth. We only get this moment. What are you going to do with yours?

—-

Today is the only day and as such it serves as the perfect opportunity to reach out and let the people in your life know that you care about them. Let them know that you appreciate them. Let them know you love them. If there are people in your life at the edges, or just beyond, let them know, too.

Go forward. Always forward.

—-

These are trying times. There is an abundance of confusion and many of us are being thrown into uncertainty.

If you need anything, I am here. My cell phone number is 507-271-3743 and the contact form is fully functional. It’s not likely that I can find you a job or send you any money, but I can be an ear. I can tell you a joke or I can just be a sounding board for any ideas you might be having. Text works best if you need it, but any form is absolutely perfect.

I know we all have circles and within them are some really great folks. I am not presenting myself as some kind of prophetic phoenix. Simply, I am available if you need a non-judgemental release.

Be well. Take care of yourself. Take care of those around you. Love  fiercely and let’s get to the other end of this. Together.

—-

Is this fear? Is this inability to feel grounded some manifestation of anxiety? Is the failure to comprehend the widespread suffering that is unfolding in real time before my eyes a byproduct of my own insecurity?

Is it? 

I am not overtly worried. I do not believe that I am going to die from any kind of contraction of this virus. 

And yet I am out of words. I cannot collect my thoughts in a way that makes sense to me. I cannot slow my brain down enough to gather any of conception as to what is actually taking place. Students are at home and will be away from their places of learning for the foreseeable future. My neighbors and friends are being laid off without pay. The services I have come to know as common place are evaporating. 

This is now. People are being told to stay home. Our leaders in government are suggesting we isolate.  

Unreal. Surreal. Economic fallout that has never been seen before. 

This is where we are and while my brain is operating in overtime, I am trying my best to stay grounded and be present to myself and my dog and the people in my immediate circle. I have not done a good job of reaching out to the second ring or the third or so on. I am doing my best though and I am trying to show up as empathetic and considerate of those whose paths I do cross.

I’m going to work. I’m showing up for my employees. I am channeling my brain directly to my heart and I am listening to both. I am here. In this. I am available, as an ear and as a sounding board.

—-

Late last fall I started recording simple videos and sharing them on the social media platforms that I was using at the time. The videos were short and succinct and contained a message that was consistent. I got a lot of positive feedback in the time that I was posting the videos.

As I am walking through this unprecedented period in time, I am drawn to put these videos back into the world. Without the social media platforms, my only current avenue is this site. As such, I am going to work on creating a page here that allows for their delivery. Look for it in the next couple of days and feel free to share the videos once they show up. The world might need a friendly reminder.

—-

Sometimes things get frustrating.

Sometimes things are circular. Sometimes there simply aren’t answers. Sometimes.

Never stop moving forward. Never.

—-

I work with the public. Every day. I go to work and I interact with anyone and everyone that wants to come through the door.

Right now, in this moment and in this time, working with the public is terrifying. Being subject to interacting with strangers in a space where they can leave whenever they want and I am locked in place is hard.

I continue to go. I show up. I clock in because I have to. I have to get paid and there is no option for me to work remotely.

I don’t know what this thing looks like on the other end, but I am hopeful that we will emerge into some new and beautiful space.

I am hopeful that the shift taking place will result in the creation of new working lives and stronger, better connected communities.

This is all very real.

—-

Wherever you are, I love you.

—-

There is so much good in the world. Even in the face of adversity and pain and struggle, good is around us. It really is. While it does require mindfulness to see it, all one has to do is look. Maybe it’s a bird singing because it’s Spring? Maybe it’s the sun peeking out from behind the clouds? Maybe it’s the quiet in a dark room? It could be anything, but it will never appear if we are not open to seeing it.

—-

There is no normal. There has never been a normal.

There is only ever now and now is amazing if I can stop long enough to absorb everything it actually is.

Be well. Love fiercely. Go forward.

—-

A cloudy and gloomy morning. Heavy thoughts and an underwhelming feeling of exhaustion. Too much work. Too many days at the wheel. Press on. Drink coffee. Being the best is irrelevant.

Words.

Competitive spirit.

Ride bikes.

Take the dog for the long walk and dress warm because it’s cold. It’s been cold. For months. It feels like the cold is going to last forever. Today is not the best day. There is always tomorrow. Try again. Ups and downs. Strikes and gutters. Keep showing up. Keep sending the message. Keep keeping. Keep.

Fill the page with whatever pops up and write it down without a pen. The internet is ablaze and we are clamoring to figure out what the next chapter is going to look like.

Stop.

Get a coffee.

Put cream in it and don’t worry about the fitness or the extra layer around the middle. None of it matters. Nothing does. This is all unfolding in real time and a writing desk at home would be real nice, but it doesn’t exist and it isn’t going to and you’re just going to have to figure it out because that’s where now is. This is your life and you are subject to the pitfalls and if you just keep riding your bike you’re going to be fine.

Fuck. This is so frustrating. This separation and distancing and the ever-changing way of doing things and the new normal and the stimulus and the lies and the bullshit.

Another antiquated white man isn’t going to save us and voting in this next election is a giant garbage can full of lies and false hope, but you should go and vote because it’s democracy.

I am tired of the nonsense and the bullshit put forth to me by the rich and the people that protect their own self-interest. It hasn’t helped anybody other than themselves and it won’t help going forward.

A general strike is in order. A massive movement of workers across every sector. Head to the streets and demand change. March on Washington and demand the elderly leave their offices and collect their things. Rise up and command a new direction.

It is time for the wealthy to stop protecting themselves on the backs of the poor.

—-

If you are going to spend any amount of time loving anyone in this world you’d best figure out what it means to actually love yourself.

Get to know the feeling and understand it fully. When you have mastered it, give it away to those you care about. The returns on your investment will be greater than you can measure.

—-

I started a fire a long time ago and I let it burn indefinitely. It’s a smoke signal fire and it’s all mine. I started it off in the distance so that if I ever saw it as I was walking through this wilderness I would know to turn around. The funny thing is that I forget, every time, that I started it. Each time, when I see it now, I turn to talk away because I am afraid. What I fail to realize is that it is exactly my fear and the behaviors that stem from my fear that push me to walk away from the smoke. The very smoke that I put in place to warm myself of this fear. 

It’s a cycle. It’s tragic. It’s my inability to let go of the past and the negative experiences I had there that keep me from feeling anything new and wonderful. 

It’s really quite something.

—-

Forget the family and walk away. The decades of dysfunction and lies have run their course. When the next generation leaves, every man shall exist solely for himself. There is no time like now.

—-

Smile at somebody just to see if they smile back.

—-

0If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I’d write a letter and it would probably look like this...

Mom and dad, I love you. Unconditionally.

Jennifer, I love you and your brood. I always have and it hasn’t always been obvious because I’m stubborn and particular in some of the worst ways.

Jack and Olivia, I love you. Endlessly. You are beautiful and amazing and full of potential and your lives are going to be magic. 

Annie, I love you. You are an incredible mother and I feel real grateful to have had the opportunity to raise beautiful children with you. I’m real glad you met Steve and I hope you two go all the way to the end.

Doug, Ralls, Raleigh, I love you. You were the best partner I never knew I needed. You saved me as much as I saved you and if I get to remember things after I’m gone, I will never forget you. 

—-

Today is the last day and as I lie here in this bed I am fully prepared to close my eyes for the last time. As I look backwards, I didn’t do anything amazing or earth shattering today. In fact, today was just another typical day. I woke up and got dressed, made the bed and a cup of coffee. I took the Doug out for a piss and enjoyed two cigarettes in the driveway. Not back to back in the smokes. I always take a little pause between them and consider the pluses and minuses of lighting a second. I usually go for it. The sun was just coming up and the air was cold, but not crisp. I saw a robin in the tree and it reminded me that Spring is incredible. When I went back in the house I crapped. It’s habitual at this point. Coffee, cigarettes, poop...repeat. At some point I realized I’d taken more time to myself than I should have so I got myself ready for my commute and went down to the garage to get my bike. Normal. Helmet on. Gloves on. Lights on. Speaker on. 

For the last couple of weeks I’ve really been into listening to Charley Crockett. It’s some kind of new honky tonk and it’s real good. When it plays through the speaker as I ride to work I cannot help but smile and sing along and tap my fingers on the brake levers to keep the beat. It’s real good stuff and I’d encourage anybody reading this to give it a listen. 

Back to today. I brought coffee along for the commute this morning and as has been commonplace for the last few rides I stopped on the west side of the Stone Arch Bridge to take in the morning air. It was real nice to pause there today and take in the quiet sounds of the few people moving around. The coffee was extra nice. I even imagined dancing my little dance that I’ve done the last couple of days when I’ve met my friend in the same space to share the rest of the ride to work. He wasn’t there this morning and that’s alright. 

The ride itself was windy and it kinda sucked but as I’m lying here now I can’t help but think of all the times I’ve ridden into the wind and felt the extra effort. It’s hard. Not impossible, but certainly not easy. In hindsight, it’s always been rewarding. Life is funny like that. Headwinds. Uphills. All of it. The extra effort is where the growth comes from. Every time. 

The roads right now are pretty much empty with everyone staying at home. Pandemics are real weird and it changes everything. Not all bad, but definitely all different. Words. The final notice. How to put it all down on paper. How to translate a million lifetimes of experiences and happenings into one final letter. It seems futile. To write it all down. 

Legacy. 

It doesn’t fit in a letter. It doesn’t fit into a sentence or a paragraph or even a book. It’s time spent and exchanges made. I made it 42 years and I met a whole bunch of folks along the way and I did my best to make the best of everything. 

I’m sorry for short changing some along the way, if that’s the way they see it. It’s useless to say it wasn’t intentional because every choice is chosen with intent. Time. We didn’t have enough. Or perhaps we had too much. Either way I am sorry for my role in your pain.

That said, I have no regrets. I have made my peace with my good and with my bad. I have always done the best I could with what I’ve had and I encourage you to look at your life through the same lens.

Take the shortcut. Take the long way. Walk the dogs to the river. Stop by on your way into work. Do all the things because you never know. You really never know and that’s obvious to me now. 

Do your best. Appreciate yourself. Love yourself. Value yourself. 

Tell others the same thing.

Goodnight. Forever.

I love you. 

—-

Space Force

Space race

Space cars

One real long Monday

A president that can’t lead and seems more concerned with his image and his ratings than he does with the health and welfare of the people he’s been tasked with providing for.

Lies and a future of unknowns. A brain that just can’t think or produce words other than weird or strange. Lost exhausted. John Prine is going to die and Neil Young was supposed to. John Lennon did and nobody cares. Life. The final frontier. Or is it space?

—-

Backpacks and ice covered bushes that are just beginning to sprout buds. A walk to the grocery store to restock the cache of canned goods that rest quietly in the fourth drawer. It’s someday in April and I’m not working for the first time in 19 days. Hectic. Worrisome. Confusing. So much has shifted while so much has not. Different patterns and more intention. An economic collapse and millions without work. Runners running on the paths to keep their sanity while so many others are drowning themselves in brown liquor and beer. Keep your head on straight. Check your alignment regularly. Do what you need to. It’s gonna be a ride that lasts for a while.

—-

Driveway fires. Charcoal beds. Brats and kraut and jokes about birds. Summertime. Bike rides. Giant flame throwers. Surround yourself with humor and laugh until you’re full. St. Paul or bust. We’ll make t-shirts. Get some gas station sodas and check out the river. Skip the trip. Stay apart. It’s how it goes.

—-

There’s a good chance you’re lost because we’re all lost and not one of us is ever going to get found because there isn’t anyone coming to look for us. We are on our own. From birth to death. The whole way whatever happens is up to us. It’s the truth. Whether we end up living some charmed life or we end up homeless, it’s entirely up to us. Yes, there are certain privileges afforded to some that are not to others.

86.9, The Ice!

The Chanticleer Commandeers Volleyball Team.

A ripped Patagonia zipper and a tool room in a weird hospital.

A drive out to some weird building for a therapy session with some stranger that charged everything and asked that I sign a receipt on a tray from a restaurant.

Fish in fish tanks that weren’t full.

That woman from California.

A dog that looked like a seal and had articulated elbows and could give hugs.

A day trip to Alaska and a person dressed as a panther.

Dreams. Just strange dreams in strange times.

—-

Only dead men are free and it is our fear that keeps us chained. April fifth was a Sunday and it has no siblings. There is no twin. This one stands alone in time and shall forever be marked by the words and the background music and the river up and down. Not even the lights were on for this trip. There was no howling. Only tears shed for the humanity and poetry and the delivery of the message. Listen with both ears and lie down in the canoe for it shall take you to the mirror and the spirits beyond. Cedar boughs. A tiny framed picture. He who talks loud say nothing. Nobody.

—-

Be positive. The past is gone and it isn’t coming back in any other form than experiences to reference as you come across new things. It’ll haunt you if you haven’t made peace with it.

Be positive. Smile at people. Practice kindness. Life is too short to be angry and nobody gives a shit about your opinion anyway.

Be positive. They’re gone. They’re never coming back. Stay right here in the present and just be.

Positive.

—-

Tuesday is Tuesday. New albums and broken glass and a cat vase that never had a chance. Walk into the wind. Stoke the coals with some paper from the bag of charcoal and cook up two slabs of cow. The peppers and the mushrooms and the onions won’t make it to the stomach because of all the protein, but a nap thereafter makes perfect sense. Get some. Have one. Drink from the firehose. Take a picture by the river and share it with all your followers. Hiding in plain sight. Wandering in to two days off like its some kind of vacation afforded only to the wealthy. Donuts. Cowboy movies and shows about human tragedy. This is now. That was then. Filterless filters. Lost in the tall grass.

Haven’t driven in days and it all feels natural. Normal. Blah. Blah. Blah. No more politics or a choice between to ancient old white guys? You pick. It’ll be a hot mess when either one of these old fuckers takes the wheel or keeps the wheel. The world has enough old white men making decisions for all. Can we just be done now?

—-

I remember the strip club in Boston. I remember smoking a cigar on the wall of the harbor. I remember sushi in Los Angeles and the time I walked across the border to Tijuana. I remember the pizza buffet in Red Lodge. I remember stumbling into a doorway in Paris in the rain and waking up to find sunshine. I remember buying corned beef in British Columbia and getting stranded in the middle of nowhere. I remember crying in Columbus Circle and what it felt like to see the sun rising up over Central Park for the first time. I remember drinking whiskey around a giant fire. I remember throwing up off the bike riding up the hill out of the valley. I remember the lonely drives back to Atlanta. I remember baseball in the Spring. I remember thinking I was invincible. I remember realizing I wasn’t. I remember the simplistic innocence of my Chevette. I remember nachos in the cafeteria. I remember sleeping in the park and then again the desert. I remember meeting Leo. I remember the antlers in Jackson Hole. I remember the mall in Seattle. I remember the ferry in Seattle. I remember that glass of water in Versailles and the many beers that followed. I remember seeing myself on television for the first time. I remember the feeling of feeling important. I remember realizing the arrogance in that. I remember the cookies and coffee. I remember snowboarding. I remember the bench seat in the van and the grand dreams I had there. I remember the baseball cards and the Walkman. I remember the quarter pipe. I remember the empty pool in Holbrook. I remember the Holland Tunnel. I remember Holland. I remember the Detroit airport and the Kansas City airport. I remember Memphis and St. Louis and Las Vegas. I remember the trip from LA to New York. I remember West Virginia in a blizzard. I remember Amarillo and Albuquerque. I remember the dog statue and the walks around Santa Fe. I remember getting sober. I remember getting married. I remember getting divorced. I remember Alaska and Montana and Idaho. I remember going door to door. I remember losing the phone in Chicago only to go back and find it. I remember sleeping in the truck. I remember riding a bike for the first time. I remember my first cigarette.

I remember my first kiss. I remember shop class. I remember fighting on the bus. I remember wanting to graduate. I remember college. I remember the Grand Canyon and New Orleans. I remember Deer Creek and Alpine Valley. I remember Cleveland. I remember, but sometimes I forget.

—-

I was once a firm believer in the idea that everything that happened, happened for a reason.

As I get older and spend more time examining my own existence and awareness and critical thinking, I am leaning further toward the idea that everything just simply happens. Without reason. Without cause. Without effect.

Everything just is.

It is not a belief. Rather, it is an acknowledgment. As such, it is a tool that allows me to stay present to the things immediately around me.

—-

I finally came to terms with doing my taxes and got upended by missing paperwork and incorrect software. Instead I stress ate an entire pizza and smashed a can of Coke like it was water at the end of some desert pilgrimage. There will be another day for taxes and the unconstitutional burping that is currently underway will subside and make way for the grotesque remorse that is sure to follow. In the meantime I will hang my head low in honor of all those that have overeaten pizza before me and make sure to make some semblance of the sign of the cross as I lay my head down tonight in the unlikely event that the veins and arteries that service my heart don’t explode with the recent addition of copious amounts of cholesterol and sodium. Actually, I have no idea how veins and arteries explode, but it seems to make sense since all the mobster movies that exist tell the story of the overweight gunslinger meeting his demise after consuming some sort of Italian fare. It could happen and because it happened in the movies it must be true. Regardless, I’m siting here and writing this on the toilet in a room in a house in Minneapolis and laughing about how ridiculous it must be for you, the reader, to have made it this far. Bookended, at each knee, by a skateboard and an open door, I’m just sitting here waiting for some level of relaxation and comfort knowing that neither will arrive until I have moved myself to the bed and assumed a fully horizontal position. Then, and only then, will I be able to take the deep, deep breaths of meditation and some kind of awkward, sideways prayer that will hopefully leave me resting humbly at the feet of the part time piece of toast known as Jesus.

It’s a real goddamn party here tonight.

—-

Get up at 3:00am and check the work email. Roll over and respond in eleven parts. Double check for spelling. Triple check. Send. Reread and find the error. Skipped an ‘R’. Not a huge deal and shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone reading this. Now I’m awake though and it’s still dark outside and somehow it’s still winter and I’m still isolated from my family. It’s not like they sleep in my bed and I don’t really ever see them at 3:00am, but the reality still lingers that I can’t see them because of distancing and isolation. It’s odd that it’s mandated now because I feel like I’ve been self-isolating for years because I’m some kind of urban hermit. This winter though. Not ending. Temps in the teens and it’s April and the little green shoots are shooting up. It should be warmer. It could be warmer. It could be. I could also not have this cough if I didn’t smoke so many cigarettes and then I probably wouldn’t think I have this virus every time, but the cessation hasn’t happened yet because the cigarettes falsely resolve the stress that’s manifested by my own worry and my own anxiety and it’s all just a crutch that I don’t really need but secretly just want because I enjoy it even though I fully acknowledge it’s kinda gross. That plus words and the National playing just above my head is the real time play by play. Covered up in a wool blanket with pillows covered in little anchors. Nothing but darkness around me. And a dog that snores. I didn’t even light the incense for this version. Conference call in five hours. Can somebody throw me a life preserver? I don’t think I’m drowning, but I sure would like to get off this boat ride.

—-

Arguing is useless. Inherently it puts one against another, often with the intent of conversion. It disallows balance in its action and only occasionally reveals compromise as an outcome. It encourages judgement and contempt. Arguing is useless.

—-

Suffering is universal. Pain is individual.

We all suffer. It is a generic term for feeling pain and enduring hardship. It is universal in that it exists.

Pain, on the other hand, is specific and different to each person that experiences it.

If a push the tines of a fork into my forearm, I will feel pain from it and the pain I feel will likely be interpreted differently than if you were to do the same thing to your arm. It is this that establishes pain as an individual experience.

Suffering is different. In the same scenario, we both feel discomfort from the tines being pushed against our skin. The discomfort we feel is suffering.

Both of these, suffering and pain, are choices. It is possible to get our minds into a place where we separate our thoughts from the physical experience of the fork being pushed into the arm, whereby we would feel no discomfort and no pain. It is a choice we can make on both accounts.

It is my belief, however, that each and everyone of us is subject to feeling discomfort at some point and subsequently will experience suffering in our lives. As for the pain, that is entirely up to all of us as individuals. For some pain may be excruciating. For others, what I would consider pain might be experienced as pleasure. Therefore, the pain in this world is not universal.

—-

Not today. Maybe some other day, but not today. It’s just not gonna work. Apathetic irrelevance. I’m not in a bad mood, I simply don’t care and I don’t care in that Nihilist sort of way except it’s magnified and it’s awful and it feels terrible and I don’t care and I don’t want to. About anything. The dog is barfing and I haven’t seen the kids and everyone is getting there stimulus checks and I’m not because I haven’t done my taxes because I get fucked on my taxes because of the choices I’ve made and I’m over it today. Maybe tomorrow will be different, but for today I’m not interested. I’m tired and my teeth are cracked and the dentist’s office exists in some fairy tale land where nothing costs money. Fuck it. Fuck today. Fuck the whole thing. And to be clear, I’m not interested in pity or sympathy because I don’t give a fuck about that either. Not today. It’s just not gonna work and I get to do that because I’m 42 years old and I get to do whatever I want and today I want to not give a fuck because this room smells like barf and the dog is probably dying and I just don’t care.

—-

Oh what a walk can do…

I got home from work in a real foul mood, as was evidenced in the last post, and I should clarify that this room still smells like barf and that’s pretty gross. Actually, right now it smells like vomit and Nag Champa because I lit a stick of incense before I left to take the dog for a walk thinking it would improve the atmosphere while we were gone, but as it turns out it only added a fragrant aroma to an otherwise horrible scent. It happens.

I digress. The walk. To the river and back. Easy. Except for the part where some guy was effectively dragging his overweight pit bull behind, or alongside, or however the whole thing was situated in relationship to his bike while he was dragging his blue tennis shoe along the pavement to slow the whole rolling ball of flaming garbage to a more respectable pace. It was definitely something and it could only be one-upped by the family that was casually cruising through the neighborhood in their clapped-out late model mini van with their pit bull standing with its front legs on the dashboard and it’s face essentially pressed against the front window. The humanity outdoors tonight was magic.

That was the first three blocks.

Things calmed down for a bit after that.

As the walk continued, University Avenue was crossed and then the railroad tracks. The neighborhood was silent. No cars. No people. This was likely the case because the temperature here currently is well below freezing and everyone is staying inside because of an executive order signed by the Governor of this great state. It made for a pleasant stroll either way and eventually led to the halfway point, the parking lot behind the Sample Room and the sunset.

The river below was moving quickly and the wind coming in from the north was brisk, but the gentle pink and orange and yellow hues above the ever-majestic Northern Metals pile of disgusting was worth every step and while the dog wouldn’t stop pulling on the leash, the setting ball of fire served as a kind reminder that tomorrow is a new day. It was something to put in my pocket.

A cigarette was smoked and laughs were had…and then we saw her. Or them. Or whomever. Across the parking lot, back in the direction of the house, walked a human of some kind and they weren’t wearing any pants and while I’m not ever going to tell anyone what they can and cannot do, there seems to be a general lack of critical thinking in the air these days and I’m concerned about the welfare of the working class in some of the neighborhoods in Minneapolis. It’s fucking cold outside and while pants are not a foolproof way to stay warm, they do serve as a real goddamn good place to start. Sheesh.

Regardless, none of the aforementioned things are the ticket to rewriting what was an otherwise awful day of human operation for me. The big winner, the golden ticket as it was, was going into the local bodega to grab some smokes before heading back to the campsite. Until just recently there has been a fully functioning tobacco store directly adjacent to this fine purveyor of foil bagged chips and sugary sodas. Today, the tobacco store was boarded up and closed because they hadn’t qualified as essential in this stunning time of Coronavirus. The dice were rolled and one of us went in to inquire as to whether or not a couple of packs of cigarettes could be acquired in lieu of purchasing chips and soda and that’s when something miraculous happened.

Upon being asked about the cigarettes, the young man behind the counter eyeballed the curious and said, “Yeah. Just go through that door in the back.”

That door. That wonderful doorway to the holy land.

When Dan finally came out, he explained what had happened to me and I couldn’t resist. I simply couldn’t resist…so I went in.

At the counter I asked for cigarettes. I was eyeballed similarly and sent to the door. I obliged and when I walked through I saw a dimly lit space that looked exactly like the tobacco store that I had just recently come to know and love. I walked in. Behind the counter was the same lovely woman who had helped me just days ago. Without asking she grabbed what she knew I wanted and we went through the same process we had before. I paid, thanked her and walked out through the same door through which I had entered. I was smiling. Things had shifted. My day had turned around. It was incredible and it was all because of the mesmerizing tenacity of the local tobacconist. What a fucking day. A real party.

—-

Morning coffee and a little bit of fear and the dog wandering through the yard like some kind of four legged zombie. The sun rises silently between the houses and the rusty wrench rests without sound on the four season table. This is the driveway. This is where everyday starts and it’s important to me because it’s familiar and it’s home…which is the first time I’ve referred to it as such since I got here. That’s a big one. Home.

For years I have felt homeless. Today I do not and there is likely significance in that and while I’d love to sit in it for a while and discover the deeper meaning, I have come to learn that the meaning is not what is important because the meaning attaches itself to a timeline that exists outside of just this present moment. Now is all I have and the things that exist around me are only what they are at the time that I experience them and then the moment passes and new things appear and then more moments pass and perhaps I find myself in the presence of the same things I once did. Everything is movement. Everything is transient. Everything is simply just everything and for now, I am home.

What a morning! The world seemingly on fire in nearly every way around me and here I am in this driveway feeling content. The fear and the influence of others and the paranoia and everything that lends itself to being awful is exactly that, awful. And it exists. It is all real and there is death and famine and poverty and a million plagues and disparity and anguish and yet here, in this one solitary moment there is peace because there is an awareness within me that acknowledges everything as it is inside of me and out.

It might not translate into a concept that can easily be digested, and I am not writing these things so that can happen. Rather, I am writing these things because these thoughts and ideas exist inside my mind and if I don’t get them out they will live in there and fester and transform into other things that I cannot interpret and I’ll end up wondering who I am and why I exist at all. It’s a slippery slope when I keep the words in and I suppose if there is any takeaway from this at all it is this: Get your words out in whatever format feels right to you; speak them, write them, sing them, paint them. Whatever you need to do, get the words out of your brain and into the world.

This kind of communication, this kind of fundamental transmission will likely open the locked doors and the shuttered windows and the empty, cavernous hallways of your mind to new words and then the cycle can be repeated. It’s an exercise and it’s what I’ve found to work for me. Take it if you like it. Leave it if you don’t.

—-

Forty two donuts and a gallon of sugary drinks. A monster car with some kind of monster engine driven by a some kind of young man who like to smoke joints.

Garbage on the sidewalk.

Kids on scooters that like dogs.

Lies my kindergarten teacher told me.

A friend once ruined my hat and I punched him in the face. There were anger issues in and around the warming house that winter and they all got resolved. No need to be alarmed.

Are you aware that one cannot purchase anything in the way of ham salad in New York City? Tuna salad, yes. Ham salad, no. There are, however, amazing pickles there. Truly.

Whatever you do, don’t talk about work. It isn’t worth it. Just leave work at work and move along. It’s best for everyone.

Spend time listening to classic hip hop. It’s worth every second.

Also, that time in Montana was wonderful. It really was.

—-

Four years ago I had a few accounts open on social media. At the time I offered anyone that was interested a handcrafted letter with no obligation. The idea was that I would send a letter to anyone that wanted one with the hopes that they would find some joy in receiving some random selection of words. If I remember correctly there were a few folks that made requests. To keep things brief, I can tell you that I dropped the ball and never sent one…until today.

Recently, someone reached out and asked where their letter was. Feeling the full weight of having stood them up back in 2016, I obliged and sent the following:

(Their name went here),

We hope this letter finds you in good health and spirits. These are interesting times we are currently living in and it’s safe to say that would likely go without saying, but it seems appropriate to reference it anyway because that’s how letters work. Typically, there’s a greeting and then some nonsense about the recipients state of being and then a whole bunch of stuff in the middle that revolves around some kind of story. It’s letter stuff and it’s been the same since forever. This one, however, is probably the same, but there’s a small part of us that wants to believe otherwise. 

The middle. This is the substance part. This is the part where we talk about how deserted the highways were today during our drive to and from the great north woods because the roads truly were empty. Not completely empty, but mostly empty because nearly everyone had been told to stay home. Except us. We had essential business to tend to, as we were delivering bikes to children stranded at an abandoned resort with their mother and her fiancé. The trip up and back was not eventful and the visit with the kids was nice, but simultaneously real weird because we don’t really know the fiancé and we definitely don’t know the fiancé’s parents who actually own the property. We went regardless and made the best of it. 

And that leads us to choices. Oh the choices we’ve made...

That’s probably enough about choices. It can be a raw subject sometimes and we usually do a great job of covering up the sorrow with stupid jokes and dirty one liners, but the truth is we still suffer in the space that is our solitude and this pandemic seems to have the whole thing flaming up like a bunch of gas rags in a dumpster. 

It’s a real party and we’re doing our best to try and keep it fun. 

We hope you enjoyed this letter even though it was four years late. 

Signed,

Us (At the time I almost exclusively used “we” instead of “I”)

—-

PAUSE

—-

Tonight I smashed a pizza. I fed my feelings and it felt real good to stuff piece after piece into my wide open pie hole and treat it like exactly that. Tonight I let my jaw unhinge itself and become a garbage disposal for far too much sodium and cholesterol. In fact, for a few fine moments this evening my mouth was just a giant hole in the ground where thousands of underpaid workers shoveled tons and tons and tons of bread and cheese and sauce onto a pile that not one of them was ever able to see with their natural eyes. Even now, as I lay here in this glutinous wake, just feet from where I, just moments ago, let loose the cannons of my intestines, I can still see them all feverishly shoveling scoop after scoop and hurling what was to be my momentary savior into the abyss below. Sweat pouring out from underneath their wide brimmed hats, down to their brows and further into their soaked shirts and stained pants. I can still hear the abrasive sound of their shovels striking into the cheese and the pepperoni. I can still smell the steaming heap as it just laid there waiting, ever so patiently, to end up in my belly. Oh the food. Oh the agony. Oh the feelings...

—-

Circles are squares with four dead ends. Rights are lefts and all the lies you ever told me are just jokes that high school kids tell each other in the lunch room. Don’t trip. That didn’t last long. Fall hard though. Fall over every crack and smash into the sidewalk and get your teeth rebuilt by the family dentist. It’ll all work itself out in Florida or Arizona or some other popular Midwestern getaway space. Whatever. Onward and only ever forward. Spend no time in the mirror because that will only ever show you what’s behind you. In fact, it won’t ever show you what’s ahead. Go.

—-

The sun is up and it’s going to be a perfect midwestern day. Low wind and warm temps. Bikes will be ridden. Smiles will be had. On some level it’s safe to assume that things will be weird and someone, if not many someone’s, will have an opinion about what is currently unfolding in this nation and feel compelled to share their ideas. It will make them feel better to be heard. Hear them. Do not judge them because their opinion may vary from yours. You got this. Just listen and wish them well.

—-

There’s a place right down by the waters edge where all they play is the best music ever, twenty-four hours a day and all they serve is Grandpa’s potato salad. The air around the place smells like incense and all the people you used to know are just hanging out and waiting to laugh about something. In the mornings it’s mostly foggy, but by noon most of the low hanging clouds have lifted and the sun comes out. It’s never too hot and it’s never too cold and nobody ever gets tired, but everybody always seems to sleep when they need to. It’s a real miracle sort of place where you’re always welcome and you can always alternate between drinking real cold water and real cold Cokes. Someday, I’m gonna make it there and I’m just going to ride bikes and sleep in the van and drink black coffee and smoke cigarettes. It’s gonna be real neat. 

—-

Morning. Birds. Coffee. A dog in the yard. Sunday. Memories and thoughts that lend themselves to good feelings. Time. Wandering mind. A Coleman ice pack. A rusty wrench. A bottle opener shaped like a fish. Plastic chairs and an outdoors rug. Slippers that make winter bearable. Hot sauce and an empty soda bottle. Work lingers. A rush to buy bicycles. Cedar shingles and a treehouse project that makes the dog shake. I remember eating yogurt in the parking lot and I sometimes get sad knowing it didn’t work out. Forward. Virus. Two coolers and a battery charger. Shovels and old mail ruined by the rain. Just keep spending because it’ll surely make everything feel better.

—-

There was a fist fight on the porch today and some talk about slaughtering a whole hog. A scraped forearm and a slipping seatpost. The break didn’t come until well after five. Two nurses talked about unions and furloughs and flat tires. Another nurse checked the box on a checkpoint and Nick came through right near the end. It’s difficult to say when the push will pull back, but it’ll come eventually and then the deep breaths can be had. Until then the sandwiches just sit in the microwave and the phone rings off the hook. The five flows steadily toward the south and wind fires back against on more days than it doesn’t. The legs cramp and the dog snores.

All just a bunch of words.

These are all just words on a screen that flow together as though they had been spoken. That’s the idea anyway. Sometimes there is insight and sometimes there is metaphor. Sometimes these words are recollections and sometimes they are simply just nonsense, but at the end of the day they are all just words. Words that have meaning to all that read them and yet there will never be consistency in how they are understood. It’s not possible. Every single set of eyes that reads these pieces interpret them different. It’s fucking amazing. A real wonder of this beautiful world.

I love you all. Truly I do.

—-

I took yesterday off to try and manage your anxiety. I started with a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. It helped.

I took yesterday off to try and manage my insecurity. I started with a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. It helped.

I took yesterday off to try and manage my own feelings about how I am in this world. I started with a walk around the block and a cigarette in the driveway. I heard the birds chirping and it reminded me that I have a voice. It helped.

I took yesterday off to try and ease the pain I feel when I think about some of the choices I’ve made in my life. I started with a breathing exercise where I count to a certain number and then do it again with a different number and so on. It was good to slow down and realize my own natural existence. It was good to feel the air pour into my lungs and visualize it serving all of my appendages. It was meditation and it helped.

I took yesterday off to feel alive. I started by getting out of bed and putting my pants on and making a cup of coffee in my little coffee machine. I eased into the day by letting the dog outside and sitting quietly while the sun made its way up and over the horizon. For a few minutes I just sat there and enjoyed everything that was happening around me. It was real nice and it helped and then I got on my bike and rode to work.

Maybe I’ll take tomorrow off, too…

—-

Wind on the bridge. Wind at my back. Wind in my face. It circles, the wind. It seems to come from every direction and it has no real source. It is mysterious to say the least and yet it is rich with metaphors. So many.

I could list some of them.

Or I could just say that I’m tired of trying to figure out the answers to all of life’s troubles. Frankly, I’m tired of seeing things as troubles.

I’ve studied myself for twenty years and made every effort to maximize my time on this planet. I’ve sought out my own efficiencies and worked to execute on them every day. In that time I have also spent my focus on examining others as they encounter situations similar to my own. I have watched and I have learned and I have applied my observations to my own life.

I am efficient. In my actions. In my words. In my being. Everything is is efficient.

I am not done learning. I hope never to be.

I am, however, done trying to solve the worlds problems and I am done trying to prove my theories as the best possible solution.

Today I just am. Just me. Here, as I am.

—-

Have a wonderful day. Really.

The sun is out here in Minnesota and most of the trees and bushes are beginning to pop out their foliage.

Everything is turning green and it’s real nice…so enjoy it.

We’ll all be dead eventually and when that happens we won’t be able to see anything.

—-

I lit a stick of incense tonight and I turned out the light.

I laid down in my bed and the dog curled up right next to me.

I turned on some tunes to play softly through the speaker just above my head. They’ll play all night, just like they always do.

Today was a great day. Tomorrow looks to be a repeat.

Truly, I hope yours is, too.

Be well and know that you are loved, you are appreciated and that you have value.

—-

Get your words out.

All of them. Keeping them in isn’t going to get anything done. If you miss somebody, tell them. If you’re confused about something, ask questions until you’re not. If you’ve simply had enough and can’t take it anymore, go outside and scream.

Get em out. All the way out. You never know what might happen and it’s that fear that’s going to keep you in the uncomfortable place.

Get your words out.

—-

It’s May 3rd and I hope you have a real swell day. Wherever you are. Whatever you’re doing. Do it with grace and smile because you’re beautiful when you do.

—-

I rode past your old place today. All the way up there. You weren’t home because you don’t live there anymore. It’s been a while actually and a part of me expected the people in the park to be wandering around with their phones, but they were gone, too.

Everything is real weird these days.

—-

I can get real negative. It’s a thing that happens. 

Lately, it’s been happening a lot. It’s probably related to the pandemic that has swept its way across this planet. Additionally, it’s also related to my own inability to practice the things I’ve been working so hard on for the last few years. Those things are, in no particular order...

1. Staying present

2. Acknowledging my own humanity

3. Acknowledging the humanity of others

4. Accepting things as they are

5. Finding positives within negatives

6. Loving myself

7. Loving others

8. Acknowledging my own value

9. Acknowledging the value in others

10. Appreciating the efforts of others

It is way too easy for me to put myself first and align myself with whatever expectations I have developed for the behavior of those that I might intersect with. My trouble in doing lies in the idea that I rarely, if ever, communicate my expectations to the others ahead of casting judgement upon them when they fail to meet said expectations. 

I do this kind of shit all the time and every time I get frustrated and angry. Seems like a real brilliant way to operate. Cast judgement against others when they fail to understand how important my beliefs are and fail to understand why they won’t just see things the way I do because obviously I’m smarter and know way more than they do about everything. Smart.

Another thing I do that is completely useless to me is use the behavior of one thing to build a concrete argument against all things like that one thing. It’s real great and it’s super helpful. 

For example, I’ll ride my bike home from work and there will be a vehicle with an Uber sticker in the window temporarily parked in the bike lane. In this example, I will quietly proclaim to myself that all Uber drivers are assholes and that they can all fuck off and die. Real fair of me. Cast judgement on the whole lot because of the act of one individual driver. It’s genius of me and requires a very large brain. 

This model works really well when analyzing public policy and/or generic institutions like golf or religion. It’s 100% legit to think that all religions are dumb because of the acts of a handful of their followers. Never mind that whatever the religion might be may have millions of followers with millions of different backgrounds. Based solely on my interactions with one of the extreme personalities, I usually find it safe to assume that each and every one of them is completely fucked and should die. More extreme brilliance on my part. So inclusive. 

Man, I can be a real asshole when I’m talking to myself. Every more-so when I actually let the negative words in my head come out and interact with another person’s ears.

I digress. Today I need to be grateful. Tomorrow, too. I need to do the work of staying present and remind myself that even though things might be difficult for me at this moment, things are likely difficult for everyone else, as well, and, as such, we’ll all better off if I can just take an extra breath and do my best to not cast judgement and refrain from being a crabby old man.  

—-

How much is enough and when should one know when the fill line has been reached?

Nobody knows. 

The human mind is capable of far more than any of us truly realize. The human body is similar, especially in the ways that the mind and body communicate directly with each other. 

For example, the mind may tell us that we simply cannot ride a bike for 100 miles. As a result, when our body begins to reject the idea at mile 50, our mind will, through some sideways manner of internal empathy, encourage the body to just stop and be done. 

Conversely, if the mind has been conditioned to believe that a 100 mile bike ride is absolutely achievable, the body may still respond in the same manner it does in the aforementioned example, but in this case the mind says, “Not yet. We aren’t stopping yet. We’re only halfway.”

Having witnessed, both in myself and in others, these two examples play out time and time again, I am left to believe that our minds and our bodies are capable of far more than we typically allow. 

So why ask the question of how much is too much, only to follow it up with some analogy about riding a bike farther than most would? Because energy. Because physical and emotional energy. How much energy spent is too much for our brains and our bodies and at what point should we realistically pull back? 

The answer is likely specific to each and every individual, but it really boils down to the return on investment quotient. Yes, the ROI. 

So...perhaps a better way to phrase the questions is: What is my ROI on the energy I spend in a day? 

Truthfully, the examination is probably only done in vain and the results, if any, are likely to be left on the table as I rush off to ride to work tomorrow. Now, though, as I am winding down from another day, in what has proven to be a more difficult time to be alive than any I have experienced previously, I am all the way in on this concept. 

How much is too much? I suppose simply acknowledging the question is an indicator. If something feels like too much, it’s likely too much. 

I remember, as I’m writing this, the period just before I filed for bankruptcy in 2009. In the months that led up to filing, I vividly remember getting home from another trip to the store and carrying bags into the house and thinking, “this kind of spending isn’t sustainable.” I thought it, but I didn’t act on it. I knew, in my gut, that the spending wasn’t sustainable and I did nothing to change it. Eventually everything culminated in economic failure and bankruptcy was inevitable. My gut knew. 

It’s an identical process for knowing when my energy is exhausted, or, more specifically, when something is enough and when something is too much. My gut knows, every time, but my mind wants to tell me differently. Body versus mind. It never ends. Back and forth and back and forth. 

I digress. Off topic. Completely off the path and onto an entirely different subject. 

Do I know myself? Do I love myself without ego? Do I see my value without being self-centered? Do I present to others in way that is selfless? In what areas can I improve? Do I hear when I listen? Am I capable of change? Am I inclusive? Do I actually roll with things? Am I a weirdo? How many questions are too many questions?

I’m tired. Exhausted. Taxed. Work is pulling on me and there are no signs that it is going to let up. The kids are far away and my folks are living on an island. I am burning out and if I’m not careful I’m going to crash. Two days off are key.  The internal analysis is helpful. It’s like fuel. A moment here and a moment there and the next thing I know I am fully aware and acknowledging my own discomfort and talking about it and continuing to grow. I continue to create boundaries. Don’t stop. Keep going. There is an end and it’s going to be great. 

—-

All of this is hard.

—-

A chain of lakes and a network of winding roads. A tiny little town shut down by the powers that be. Clocks stopped. Everything on pause.

A visit to the great north woods. Sand in every direction and birch trees and pine trees and a shuffle board court long forgotten.

This is where my kids live. Way up here in all of this. Way up here in all of this quiet and seclusion. Way up here in this foreign land.

And me? I do not live here. I am transient. I am a visitor in the places I occupy and I have been for years. I am a loner. I am lonely. Hunkered down in the back of this 25 year old van trying to find the smallest of pleasures to ease the pain that comes with wandering around. Coffee from fresh beans. Incense in the air. Anything. A smile. A laugh. I’m pretty good at it. In fact, I’m great. I laugh and I joke and I always have the words to make light of everything because it’s what I’ve been doing for twenty years...finding the silver lining.

Twenty years. Twenty fucking years. Not a drop of liquor. Not a single drug. Nothing to alter my mind. For twenty years I have worked to make chicken salad out of chicken shit and I have done an amazing job. I really should be proud of the effort.

Instead, I’m in the back of a van and I’m lonely and it doesn’t matter if I’m in this van or in the room at the house or in a crowd of people...I’m lonely, but man have I got the jokes and the funny stories and the stories of amazing adventures. I have it all. A library full. It’s incredible the lengths I’ve gone to. Coping mechanisms. Walls. All of it and yet somehow I expect to find some exit door. Somehow I’ve convinced myself that I’ll find that escape hatch and I’ll step through it and I’ll find that alternative universe where I feel a part of, rather than apart from. Someday. I keep telling myself that. It helps with the present. Whistling in the dark. 

—-

Reflections. Connections. Fist fights outside of work and longer hours. Masks all day and the sauna that creates for the skull. No, you can’t use the bathroom. No, the cafe isn’t open. No, you can’t borrow tools. No, I can’t fix your bike for free. No, you can’t. No. No. No. I need you to step back. I need six feet please. I just need some space. Just give me some goddamn space. 

Twenty years. It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve consumed a drop of alcohol. Twenty years. Everything difficult in my life has been done without the escape hatch known as liquor. It’s amazing. That’s the reflection. Reflecting on twenty years of just the act of getting sober and having a kid and getting married and having two more kids and buying a house and buying another house and going bankrupt and getting divorced and moving across the country and moving back and changing careers and having nothing and starting over and being lonely and just wanting someone to understand but not being able to manage the emotional seas connected to living through everything without a crutch. Living through everything at full speed and having my wages garnished for the last twenty years. Living through all of that and constantly trying to work to be a better, more aware  human and all the while just wanting to be held and told that everything is going to be just fine. It’s why I tried to climb under the couch those nights in New York. I just wanted to be held. Oh well. Time goes. It just does. It moves forward and I wake up and I do my best and try to do right by others and I try to stay positive and I do a good job of it. I do. Everything is exactly as it should be and I haven’t drank in twenty years. 

Twenty motherfucking years. That’s a long ass time to show up as who I am in every situation. It’s a long time to not be affected by a liquid…so when I see other people show up affected it bothers me because I no longer understand it. I don’t get the affect. I don’t get the effect. It no longer makes sense to me and it doesn’t have to.

This is all just me processing stuff and thinking about how I got here in this moment. 

—-

Alcohol dreams. Smashed beer cans and the hopelessness that accompanies them. For years I had no issue being around the consumption of alcoholic beverages, but as of late I have grown to see it in the same light as any other form of capitalistic consumption. 

Consume. Consume. Consume. 

It’s what we do in this country. We consume things. Land and water and plastic and rare earth metals. Plastic and wood and fabric and leather. Food and plants and air and alcohol. We selfishly consume for our own benefit and we do it in such a way that we generally disregard those that may come in our footsteps. We consume to our own demise.

We want and we want and we want.

We forego the fundamentals of our own basic needs and we actively work to fulfill every desire of our wants. We demand more and more and more for less and less and less. We asked for more of the things we want at our finger tips and we got everything we could have ever wished for. We wanted shopping in our homes because going out to the store was just too much effort. We wanted a food supply chain that seemed endless and approachable. We wanted everything delivered to our door and we got it. We wanted big box stores for one stop shopping and we got it. We wanted everything to make our lives easier and in the blink of an eye we got it. We wanted bigger houses and faster cars that could play our music wirelessly and keep the temperature right where we felt the most comfortable. We wanted to be cool when it was hot and warm when it was cold. We wanted everything and we got it and the price we paid was something that we could never get back. The price we paid was higher than anything we could ever imagine. Oh...the price we paid. Oh...the price we are paying. Oh...where do we even begin?

We begin at the end. We begin when we’ve had enough. We begin when we’ve died and rotted and have been faced with a new life and a new series of roadways and paths that lead to other roadways and paths. We begin when we abandon our wants and we strive simply to meet our needs. We begin when we acknowledge that the newest shiny thing isn’t going to solve our dilemma. We begin when we realize that our consumption is the thing that holds us in the trenches and pits us against ourselves and our fellows. We begin when we conclude that our best efforts in the ways of wanting and wanting and wanting are the very things that hold our hands against the flames and our faces against the wall. We begin when we give up our longing to achieve and compare and out do our neighbors and our friends and our coworkers. We begin when we end. 

We begin when we end. We begin when we give up. When begin when we stop fighting ourselves. We begin when our awareness of our selves looks no different that those around us. That’s when it all starts. That’s when the real living begins and the fraudulent living ends. That’s when we become our true selves...when we realize that everything is exactly as it should be and our wants never exceed our needs. 

Perhaps we can just start all this tomorrow...for tonight we’ve already thrown the ideas away because it’s too late to care and the sun is down and the idea factory has shut down? Perhaps tomorrow we can give it another go? Perhaps tomorrow?

—-

I prayed to god last night and as I’ve thought about it since I’ve wondered what they look like and what it is they do and where it is that they actually reside. I’ve thought about the process and how the act of praying is me signing over my beliefs and my fears, which are all manifestations of my mind to some supreme, all-seeing being that also only exists within the confines of my beliefs. Let me write that again. 

When I pray to god I am handing over my beliefs to my beliefs...my ideas to my ideas. 

What is that? How does that actually function? Culturally we’ve created a deity that is widely accepted, believed. This deity is all-knowing and all-powerful. According to common theory, this deity, this god, channels our beliefs, our opinions, into positive acts that shape and define our societies. That’s a lot to swallow. 

Some all-understanding myth that only exists in our minds has the power to alter and shape the interactions we have with other living creatures? How does that work? 

Hmmm...

—-

Two drawers full of soup cans. Some with labels and some without. Cost effective. Time effective. Everything effective. Build community. Stay true. Never sell out. Take what’s yours and leave the rest. Pack it in, pack it out. A family of seven…six of whom appear to be under the age of twenty one. One of whom appears to have abandoned the dress code. Branch Covidians. Snow geese and trumpeter swans. Deer. Tired legs. Just words. Tired every day. More cases popped in the city. The hospitals and busy. Full and getting fuller. Like that house in San Francisco. Tunes in the air. Even the dog is tired. Just writing things as they pop in my head. It’s meditative. Or at least it was way back when in the attic with the little sand garden. Electrical outlets and concrete walls. Redo the floors. Tear out the bathroom. Remodel the kitchen. Do it again. Save space. Spend money. Run on sentence. Run a marathon. Run a 5k. Run until you’re done and then stop running. Ride bikes. Ride them because your ego told you to. Ride them until you quit. Take a break. Find bikes again. Ride them because it feels good. Do push ups. Take rest days. Take care of yourself you big dumb idiot. Stop pushing yourself until you collapse. It didn’t work ever and it’s not working now. Create boundaries and stick to them. Eat better and drink water. Drink more water. Get good sleep. At least try to get good sleep. It is possible. Understand that you are only one person and that as one person you have limits to what you can get done in a day or a week or a month. Understand that if you exhaust yourself by extending yourself to people at work and the kids and the people outside of work that there won’t be anything left for you. Understand burnout. Understand self-care. Understand the importance of taking time to take care of yourself. Laugh. Write this out like its some kind of Baz Luhrman song from the 90’s. You’re ridiculous. Always with the introspection and the self-help. Just relax. Stop looking at the problem and understand that you are a human just like all the other humans and that as such you are subject to feelings and emotions and that you’re not always going to get it right. You will make mistakes. You will stumble. You will get up and try again. You will and eventually you do that enough times that you’ll be old and then you’ll die. Try to have fun along the way. Do things that feel good until they don’t and then do different things. Regret nothing. Go forward. It’s gonna be rad.

—-

It only took forty two years and thirteen hours to realize there is not just one question. In fact, there is no question at all. Therefore, there are no answers. Everything simply is exactly what it is.

Do whatever you like. That’s my plan.

—-

My city is on fire. My shop is emptied and likely will not reopen. My heart is heavy for all those that suffer from inequality and I support their calls for change. Words and thoughts and prayers are empty. Even these. Action is needed. Now.

After every forest fire there is a period of rebirth and through that process of beginning again everything is vibrant and full of life.

—-

I woke up this morning with the light on, after sleeping in my clothes, on top of my covers. This has been the case for the past three nights. Sleeping for two hours, fully clothed.

When I got up today, I started my normal routine, but realized that the slippers I normally wear to let the dog out weren’t appropriate. Instead, my brain told me to put on the sneakers…just in case. When I got outside, instead of sitting down in the chair to let the dog do his thing, I went out to the street to see if all the windows in my car and van were still there…they were. While fully intact, the car and van were covered in ash from the legacies that burned in North Minneapolis last night.

While I was still in the street my immediate manager called me. We spoke for a few minutes about everything and it was nice to get some words out.

Eventually I made my way back up the driveway to assume some level of morning normalcy and drink my cup of coffee.

A few minutes later the owner of the company I work for called me. He and I spoke for several minutes. He told me he supports me in every way. I appreciate him for that. As we spoke, I cried and then he cried. It was impactful. It felt good to get the tears out.

When we got off the phone I felt different. The air felt different. Everything felt different.

Now, an hour later, as I sit here in the driveway and type this I am calm. I have music playing for the first time in a couple of days. The air in this part of the city is different. I can feel community again. I can feel a sense of togetherness. I can feel a shift in the tide of what has been violence and chaos for the last three days.

I love this city. I love Minneapolis. I love the Midtown neighborhood and I know it’s in pain right now. I am here and I am staying. We will grow through this and beyond it. We will emerge strong and united and hopefully more near equal. I believe that this morning and I hope you do, too.

—-

The events that have transpired over the course of the last week and the two months prior have allowed for a shift in the way we exist. That is to say that an opportunity to become more intentional has presented itself. When we have been asked to stay home to prevent the spread of a worldwide virus, we have become more intentional about where we go and when we go there. We have become more intentional about who we interact with and how. We have become more intentional about the food we buy and what we eat.

When the tragedy that struck Minneapolis one week ago happened, it triggered a response that no one could have anticipated. The result, while definitely messy and chaotic on a lot of levels, was needed. Subsequently there has been a shift in the language we use and it can be seen throughout our communities, both in person and digitally. In many cases, though, words weren’t wanted. Lip service, as we have become accustomed to hearing, wasn’t going to be enough this time. Hollow speeches weren’t going to change anything. So there was a physical push and riots happened and fires burned and what it did was get everyone’s attention. The violence was action. The protests were action. All of it was action and scores and scores of folks, in the face of all that was unfolding, kept talking…and then something happened.

More words happened, but they were different.

Yesterday the Governor of Minnesota held a press conference and absolutely owned it. He spoke about accountability and made statements that indicated an immediate shift in the way things will be done going forward to address Minnesota’s inequities. They were just words, but they were different. What I heard was ownership and accountability. What I heard was action and it got me to thinking about the following: When words are spoken they become actions in that they are produced in our vocal chords and expelled by the movement of our tongue and lips.

If we acknowledge the actionable shift in our dialect, we can follow that with the other parts of our body, our non-verbal communication points.

Additionally, the more we exercise our mouths and our arms and our hands and our cores to this, the more likely our brains are to follow.

If we are to become the change we want to see in others, first we must begin with ourselves. Let’s alter our language. Let’s change our vernacular. Let’s go forward with inclusion and engagement. Let’s change our world.

—-

To look through the lens of humanity in business is a luxury of profit.

—-

Dan’s Feed Bin and the decaying lounge across the street. A bridge through the fog and the most modern of clubs raised for income based housing. Fermented cherries, olives and wildcat. Wrinkled faces. Cribbage boards. Walks after dinner.

Go to Tennessee.

Go to Louisiana.

Cheese. Church. Radio.

It’ll be Wisconsin before you know it and you’ll be old and in the way.

Time will forget you and you’ll forget it.

Onward. Always forward.

—-

The desperation and anxiety that accompany waiting in line for donated food alongside a busy freeway stands immediately perpendicular to the abundance and opulence of streaming subscriptions and delivered groceries.

—-

I passed you on the two lane highway and then you turned off. The risk outweighed the reward.

Hot heat humid hungry.

I got an RC Cola and some rope from the store down the road. I spoke about the stove and the burns on my hand. I knew you were moving, but I couldn’t ever place where to. There were donuts and cholesterol and trucks as big as the government. Coffee that cooked too long and sand pits where our tires used to be.

I’m tired and I want to go home.

—-

When you turn seventy again you’re going to wonder why the water in the ditch was up over your waist. “Why?”, you’ll ask yourself, when you’re wondering why you yawned so much in your youth. You’ll be seventy for the seventh time and you’ll forget to remember and you’ll remember to forget. It’ll be over before it starts and you’ll be sad and you’ll mope around like it’s somehow going to matter to the folks that watch your program on the television, but it won’t. It won’t matter then like it doesn’t matter now. You’ll be lost in the car and grabbing between the seats for the crinkled, folding map that fell two decades ago.

—-

You’ll be better off alone

—

I remember the Oldsmobile and the Lincoln. There must have been so much pride in acquiring them both, as they were certainly symbols of success. It’s unfortunate that time didn’t perpetuate that feeling and that success in modern times is no longer hinged to the possession of particular items. Rather, these days, success seems to attach itself to whether or not one can come to terms and make peace with the fact that most will always and forever be behind in their debt.

A paint marker and a concrete wall.

A walk by the river and a fistful of memories.

I can relate. Right here in the middle of my life.

Forty-six. Old and in the way.

Observe. Take notes.

Good begets good.

Bad begets bad.

—

I walked right up to the edge of your cliff and looked over. I walked right up to the end of your life and looked in. I saw your plane coming down the runway from the line to get through security, but I fainted when I had to raise my hands. Inspected. Rejected. Lost. Found. Bound. No cell service and winds blowing in from the West. It’ll be eight minutes for you and the remainder for the rest. I’ve struggled with you all of my life were the words from the wheelchair in that tiny little bar in that tiny little neighborhood long forgotten and moved on from. A volunteer and the leather-bound sleeve. It’s time to go. It’s time to go. It’s time to go.

—

Early morning on the eastern end of things.

Heading east to go north.

Death awaits and the angles of the awards are unknown.

Pass eleven and stumble down to seventeen.

A bank, a bulldog and a vacation home.

A coffee cup, a dead end parking lot and a lost cause carpet on an otherwise tiled floor.

The newsman said there is a one million dollar reward for the recovery of the body, but failed to give any other description. Cash wise casino trailer and a red minivan retro-fitted to carry the immobile. Large vans and manufactured wealth. Striped sweaters, coffee cups and a backpack made for traveling. Sorry. Checkers. Board games. One crumpled napkin, two beverages and a clock that winds down to twenty-four. You’ll never find your way out of here because you cannot remember how you got in. You failed. You’ll fail again.

Broken fingers hold rings at swollen knuckles. Finger nails clip themselves into this sinking feeling, this sinking ship of feelings tethered to the dock of manicured lives. Longshoremen wander aimlessly into the fog whose horn only ever blows for obstructed views. Black wheels. Silver wheels. Yellow buses. You are lost. We are lost. Forever.

—-

Take a good long look at the footwear of America. We are not what we wear or what we do for work, but in so many ways we are. Crippled by prosperity and aged into disparity. Wheelchairs and diabetes. Anonymous alcoholics lined up at the liquor store. An a front. An aside. Tackled into self-doubt by our own want to get ahead. Vote for me they yell from the stone-paved pathways that lead to their second homes. I’ll write you a book. I’ll mail you an inspirational video. I’ll start a charity to employ my great-niece. I’ll scream down from my glass tower while I throw rocks and spray painted racial epithets on the walls of our universities and institutional learning facilities. Arrogance. Ignorance. Attitude. Platitudes. Lie to me and tell me I’m pretty. Gratuity. Income. Analysis. Paralysis. Ride the bus to the edge of town and get off at the last stop. Your graduated now. Good luck going forward.

—-

How to grow without losing yourself?

—-

Eat the rich.

The lies your grandfather told you about class were real and the truth of the matter is that the wealthy live a different life than those without.

Held down. Suffocated. Stamped. Stomped. Stopped.

Elections as a pacifier. Governments governing to maintain order.

This isn’t tinfoil hat stuff. This is everyday.

Eat the rich.

—-

I have a broken tooth and it lives inside my mouth in the same way a child’s tooth does when it’s loose.

I’m 46 and shouldn’t have a broken tooth that’s ready to fall out, but I do.

Add to that I have a chronic cough that warrants a CT scan.

I’ve chased success my whole life and always believed that it came in the form of praise from another human. I work my ass off an an employee and I’ve spent years dedicating my life to create space for cyclists…all in a quest to believe that I was enough.

Today, with my broken tooth and stumbling health, I can say that the quest for internal health and wellbeing is the only one that matters.